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CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

THE WASON COLLECTION

THIS BOOK IS THE GIFT OF

Nixon Griff is

Cornell University Library
DS 810.R65 1922a

The foundations of Japan :notes made dur

3 1924 023 222 320

DATE DUE

^^ElI

PRINTEOINU.S.A-

The original of tliis book is in
tlie Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023222320

THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN

BATH IN AS AGBICULTURAI; SCHOOL

JUJITSXJ (AXD EIFLES) AT THE SAME SCHOOL, p. 60

YOUNG JAPAN

[Frontispiere

THE FOUNDATIONS
OF JAPAN

NOTES MADE DURING JOURNEYS OF

6,000 MILES IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS AS

A BASIS FOR A SOUNDER KNOWLEDGE

OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE

BY J. W. ROBERTSON SCOTT

Thome oocntibs")

WITH 85 ILLUSTRATIONS

" In good sooth, my masters, this is no door, jet it is a little window"

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

1922

^^/o f

SCOTT SAN NO OKUSAN

.FOB WHOLESOME CBITiaSM

A concern arose to spend some time with them that I might
feel and miderstand their life and the spirit they live in, if
haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they
might he in any degree helped forward by my following the
leadings of truth among them when the troubles of War
were increasing and when travelling was more difficult than
usual. I looked upon it as a more favourable opportunity to
season my mind and to bring me into a nearer sympathy with
them. — Journal of John Woolman, 1762.

I determined to commence my researches at some distance
from the capital, being well aware of the erroneous ideas I must
form should I judge from what I heard in a city so much
subjected to foreign intercoxirse. — Borrow.

INTRODUCTION

The hope with which these pages are written is that their
readers may be enabled to see a Uttle deeper into that
problem of the relation of the West with Asia which the
historian of the future will unquestionably regard as the
greatest of our time.

I lived for four and a half years in Japan. This book
is a record of many of the things I saw and experienced
and some of the things I was told chiefly during rural
journeys — more than half the population is rural —
extending to twice the distance across the United States
or nearly eight times the distance between the English
Channel and John o' Groats.

These pages deal with a field of investigation in Japan
which no other volume has explored. Because they fall
short of what was planned, and in happier conditions might
have been accomplished, a word or two may be pardoned
on the beginnings of the book — one of the many literary
victims of the War.

The first book I ever bought was about the Far East.
The first leading article of my journalistic apprenticeship
in London was about Korea. When I left daily journalism,
at the time of the siege of the Peking Legations, the first
thing I published was a book pleading for a better under-
standing of the Chinese.

After that, as a cottager in Essex, I wrote — above a
nom de guerre which is better known than I am — a dozen
volumes on rural subjects. During a visit to the late
David Lubin in Rome I noticed in the big library of his
International Institute of Agriculture that there was no
book in English dealing with the agriculture of Japan.'

' There is a small book by an able American soil specialist, the late
Professor King, which describes through rose-tinted glasses the farming

vii

viii INTRODUCTION

Just before the War the thoughts of forward-looking
students of our home affairs ran strongly on the relation
of intelligently managed small holdings to skilled capitaUst
farming. 1 During the early " business as usual " period of
the War, when no tasks had been found for men over
mihtary age — Mr. Wells's protest will be remembered —
it occurred to me that it might be serviceable if I could have
ready, for the period of rural reconstruction and readjust-
ment of our international ideas when the War was over,
two books of a new sort. One should be a stimulating
volume on Japan, based on a study, more sociological than
technically agricultural, of its remarkable small-farming
system and rural life, and the other a complementary
American volume based on a study of the enterprising large
farming of the Middle West. I proposed to write the
second book in co-operation with a veteran rural reformer
who had often invited me to visit him in Iowa, the father
of the present American Minister of Agriculture. Early
in 1915 I set out for Japan to enter upon the first part of
my task. Mr. Wallace died while I was still in Japan,
and the Middle West book remains to be undertaken by
someone else.

The Land of the Rising Sim has been fortunate in the
quaUty of the books which many foreigners have written.'
But for every work at the standard of what might be called
the seven " M's " — Mitford, Murdoch, Munro, Morse,
Maclaren, " Murray " and McGovern— there are many
volumes of fervid " pro- Japanese " or determined " anti-
Japanese " romanticism. The pictures of Japan which
such easily perused books present are incredible to

of Japan, and of China and Korea as well, on the basis of a flying trip
to countries the population of which is thrice that of Great Britain and
the United States together. The author of another book, published last
year, delivers himself of this astonishing opinion: "The Japanese is no
better fitted to direct his own agriculture than I am to steer a rudderless
ship across the Atlantic."

1 Vide Sir Daniel Hall's Pilgrimage of English Farming and articles of
mine in the Nineteenth Century and Times, and my Land Problem.

' The Japanese have only lately, however, made some acknowledgment
of their debt to Heam, and in an eight-page bibliography of the best
books about Japan in the Japan Year Book Murdoch's as yet unrivalled
History is not even mentioned.

THE BASIC FACT ix

readers of ordinary insight or historical imagination, but
they have had their part in forming pubhc opinion.

The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural
country. Japanese sestheticism, the victorious Japanese
army and navy, the smoking chimneys of Osaka, the pushing
mercantile marine, the Parliamentary and administrative
developments of Tokyo and a costly worldwide diplomacy
are all borne on the bent backs of Ohydkusho no Fufu,^
the Japanese peasant farmer and his wife. The deposi-
tories of the authentic Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit)
are to be found knee deep in the sludge of their paddy
fields.

One book about Japan may well be written in the
perspective of the village and the hamlet. There it is
possible to find the way beneath that surface of things
visible to the tourist. There it is possible to discover the
foundations of the Japan which is intent on cutting such a
figure in the East and in the West. There it is possible to
learn not only what Japan is but what she may have it in
her to become.

A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the
technique of agriculture. He conceives agriculture and
country life as Arthur Young and Cobbett did, as a means
to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone of a healthy
State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close
acquaintance with the rural civilisation of two pre-
eminently small-holdings countries, Holland and Denmark,
but by what I knew to be precious in the rural life of my
own land.

An interest in rural problems caimot be simulated. As I
journeyed about the country the sincerity of my purpose
— there are few words in commoner use in the Far
East than sincerity — was recognised and appreciated. I
enjoyed conversations in which customary barriers had
been broken down and those who spoke said what
they felt. We inevitably discussed not only agricultural
economy but life, religion and morality, and the way
Japan was taking.

1 Ohyahusho must not be confused with Oo-hyakusho or Oo-byakusho,
which means s laorge farmer. O is a polite prefis ; OooiO means large.

X INTRODUCTION

I spoke and slept in Buddhist temples, I was received
at Shinto shrines. I was led before domestic altars. I was
taken to gatherings of native Christians. I planted
commemorative trees until more persimmons than I can
ever gather await my return to Japan. I wrote so many
gaku^ for school walls and for my kind hosts that my
memory was drained of maxims. I attended guileless
horse-races. I was present at agricultural shows, fairs,
wrestling matches, Bon dances, village and county councils
and the strangest of public meetings. I talked not only
with farmers and their families but with all kinds of
landlords, with schoolmasters and schoolmistresses,
policemen, shopkeepers, priests, co-operative society
enthusiasts, village officials, county officials, prefectural
officials, a score of Governors and an Ainu chief. I sought
wisdom from Ministers of State and nobles of every rank,
from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns
down to democratic Barons who prefer to be called " Mr.",
I chatted with farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated
landladies and mill girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a
Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and bathed
with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the
situation of Japan with the new countryman in college
agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in a remote
region, beheld what is rare nowadays, the old countryman
kneeling before his cottage with his head to the ground as
the stranger rode past.

I made notes as I traversed paddy-field paths, by
mountain ways, in colleges, schools, houses and inns. It
can only have been when crossing water on men's backs that
I did not make notes. I jotted things down as I walked,
as I sat, as I knelt, as I lay on my futon, as I journeyed
in kuruma, on horseback, in jolting basha, in automobiles,
in shaking cross-country trains and in boats ; in brilliant
sunshine and sweltering heat, in the shade and in dust ;
in the early morning with chilled fingers or more or less
furtively as I crouched at protracted private or official
repasts, or late at night endeavoured to gather crumbs

' Horizontal wall writings.

WEARING PATIENCE TO SHREDS xi

from the wearing conversation of polite callers who, though
set on helping me, did not always find it easy to understand
the kind of information of which I was in search. One of
these asked my travelling companion sotto voce, "Is he
after metal mines ? "

I went on my own trips and on routes planned out for me
by agricultural and social zealots, and jfrom time to time
I returned physically and mentally fatigued to my little
Japanese house near Tokyo to rest and to write out from
my memoranda, to seek data for new districts from the
obliging Department of Agriculture and the Agricultural
College people at the Imperial University, and to eat and
drink with rural authorities who chanced to be visiting
the capital from distant prefectures. I had many set-
backs. I was misinformed, now and then intentionally
and often unintentionally. There were many days which
were not only harassing but seemingly wasted. I often
despaired of achieving results worth all the exertion I was
making and the money I was spending. I must have worn
to shreds the patience of some English-speaking Japanese
friends, but they never owned defeat. In the end I found
that I made progress.

But so did the War, which when I set out from London
few believed would last long. I was troubled by continually
meeting with incredible ignorance about the War, the issues
at stake and the certain end. The Japanese who talked
with me were 10,000 miles away from the fighting. Japan
had nothing to lose, everything indeed to gain from the
abatement of Europe's activities in Asia. Not only
Japanese soldiers but many administrative, educational,
agricultural and commercial experts had been to school in
Germany. There was much in common in the German and
Japanese mentalities, much alike in Central European and
Farthest East regard for the army and for order, devotion
to regulations, habit of subordination and deification of
the State. Eventually the well-known anti-Ally campaign
broke out in Tokyo, a thing which has never been sufficiently
explained. Soon I was pressed to turn aside from my
studies and attempt the more immediately useful task : to
explain why Western nations, whose manifest interests were

xii INTRODUCTION

peace, were resolutely squandering their blood and wealth
in War.

If what I published had some measure of success,' it was
because by this time, unlike some of the critics who
sharply upbraided Japan and made impossible proposals
in impossible terms, I had learnt something at first hand
about the Japanese, because I wrote of the difficulties as
well as the faults of Japan, and because I was now a httle
known as her well-wisher. One of the two books I
published was translated as a labour of love, as I shall never
forget, by a Japanese pubUc man whose leisure was so
scant that he sat up two nights to get his manuscript
finished. Before long I had involved myself in the arduous
task of founding and of editing for two years a monthly
review. The New East (Shin Toyo),' with for motto a sen-
tence of my own which expresses what wisdom I have
gained about the Orient, The real barrier between East and |
West is a distrust of each other's morality and the illusion that I
the distrust is on one side only.

The excuse for so personal a digression is that, when this
period of literary and journalistic stress began, my rural
notebooks and MSS., memoranda of conversations on social
problems and a heterogeneous collection of reports and
documents had to be stowed into boxes. There they
stayed until a year ago. The entries in a dozen of my Uttle
hurriedly filled notebooks have lost their flavour or are
unintelligible : I have put them all aside. Neither is it
possible to utilise notes which were submarined or lost
in over-worked post offices. This book — I have had to
leave out Kyushu entirely — is not the work I planned, a
complete account of rural life and industry in every part
of Japan, with an excursus on Korea and Formosa, and
certain general conclusions : a standard work, no doubt, in,
I am afraid, two volumes, and forgetful at times of the
warning that " to spend too much Time in Studies is
Sloth."

What I had transcribed before leaving Japan I have now

1 About 35,000 copies of my two bilingual books were circulated.

2 With the backing of a London Committee composed of Lord
Bumham, Sir 6. W. Prothero, Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey and Mr. C. V. Sale.

JETTISONING TECHNICS xiii

been able in the course of a leisiired year in England to
overhaul and to supplement by up-to-date statistics in an
extensive Appendix. In the changed circumstances in
which the book is completed I have also ruthlessly trans-
ferred to this Appendix all the technical matter in the text,
so that nothing shall obstruct the way of the general reader.
At some future date there may be by another hand a book
about Japan in terms of soils, manures and crops. That is

ISMh Karon

"Byqonb Days in Japan" is the Title op this
Cabtoon

the book the War saved me from writing. In the present
work I have the opportunity which so few authors have
enjoyed of jettisoning all technics into an Appendix.

" It is necessary," says a wise modern author, " to
meditate over one's impressions at leisure, to start afresh
again and again with a clearer vision of the essential facts."
And a Japanese companion of my journeys writes, " Never
can you be sorry that this book is coming late. This time
of delay has been the best time ; we have had enough

xiv INTRODUCTION

of first impressions." The justification for this volume
is that, in spite of the difficulties attending the composition
of it, it may be held to offer a picture of some aspects of
modern Japan to be found nowhere else. Politics is not for
these pages, nor, because there are so many charming books
on aesthetic and scenic Japan, do I write on Art or about
Fuji, Kyoto, Nara, Miyanoshita and Nikko. I went
to Japan to see the countryman. The Japanese whom
most of the world knows are townified, sometimes American-
ised or Europeanised, and, as often as not, elaborately
educated. They are frequently remarkable men. They
stand for a great deal in modern Japan. But their un-
townified fellow-countrymen, with the training of tradition
and experience, of rural schoolmasters and village elders,
and, as frequently, of the carefully shielded army, are more
than half of the nation.

What is their health of mind and body ? By what social
and moral principles and prejudices are they swayed ?
To what extent are they adequate to the demand that is
made and is likely to be made upon them ? In what
respects are they the masters of their lives or are mastered ?
In what ways are they still open to Western influences ?
And in what directions are they now inclined to trust to
" themselves alone " ?

If the masters of the rural journal were sometimes mis-
taken in the observations they made from horseback, I
cannot have escaped blundering in passing through more
dimly lit scenes than they visited. " If there appears
here and there any uncorrectness, I do not hold myself
obliged to answer for what I could not perfectly govern." '
But I have laboriously taken all the precautions I could and
I have obeyed as far as possible a recent request that
" visitors to the Far East should confine themselves to what
they have seen with their own eyes." As Huxley wrote,
" all that I have proposed to myself is to say. This and this
have I learned."

I take pleasTire in recalling that some years ago I was
approached with a view to undertaking for the United
States Government a socio-agricultural investigation in a

1 Tenison, 1684.

BRITAIN. AMERICA AND JAPAN xv

foreign country. Reared as I have been in the whole
faith of a citizen of the EngUsh-speaking world, I am glad
to think that the present volume may be of some service
to American readers. The United States is within ten
days — Canada is within nine — of Japan against Great
Britain's month by the Atlantic-C.P.R.-Pacific route and
eight weeks by Suez. There are more American visitors
than British to Japan. It was America that first opened
Japan to the West, and the debt of Japan to American
training and stimulus is immense. But British services to
Japan have also been substantial. Great Britain was the
first to welcome her within the circle of the Great Powers,
and the Anglo- Japanese Alliance did more for Japan
than some Japanese have been willing to admit. The
problem of Japan is the problem of the whole English-
speaking world. Rightly conceived, the interests of the/
British Empire and the United States in the Far East arel
one and indivisible.

The Japanese version of the title of this book (kindly
suggested by Mr. Seichi Narus^) is Nihon no Shinzui,
literally, " The Marrow " or " The Core of Japan." His
Excellency the Japanese Ambassador, the beauty of whose
calligraphy is well known, was so very kind as to allow
me to requisition his clever brush for the script for the
engraver ; but it must be understood that Baron Hayashi
has seen nothing of the volume but the cover.

I greatly regret that the present conditions of book
production make it impossible to reproduce more than
one in thirty of my photographs.

It is in no spirit of ingratitude to my hosts and many
other kind people in Japan that I have taken the decision
resolutely to strike out of the text all those names of places
and persons which give such a forbidding air to a traveller's
page. I have pleasure in acknowledging here the particular
obligations I am under to Kunio Yanaghita, formerly
Secretary of the Japanese House of Peers and a dis-
tinguished and disinterested student of rural conditions.
Dr. Nitobe, assistant secretary of the League of Nations,
aninSs wife. Professor Nasu, Imperial University, Mr.
Yamasaki, Mr. M. Yanagi, Mr. Kanzo Uchimiu:a, Mr.

xvi INTRODUCTION

Bernard Leach, Mr. M. Tajima, Mr. Ono and two young
officials in Hokkaido, who each in turn found time to join
me on my journeys and showed me innumerable kindnesses.
It was a piece of good fortune that while these pages were
in preparation Mr. Yanaghita, Professor Nasu and other
fellow-travellers were in Europe and available for con-
sultation. Professor Nasu unweariedly furnished pains-
taking answers to many questions, and was kind enough
to read all of the book in proof ; but he has no responsi-
bility, of course, for the views which I express. I am also
specially indebted to Dr. Kozai, President of the Imperial
University, to Mr. Ito and other officials of the Ministry of
Agriculture, to Mr.^uii33pi, one of the most understanding
of travelled Japanese, to Mr. IwgJ^ga, formerly of the
Imperial Railway Board, to Dr. Sato, President of Hokkaido
University, and his obliging colleagues, to the Imperial
Agricultural Society, to Professors Yahagi and Yokoi, and
to Viscount Kano, Dr. Kuwada, Mr. I. Yoshida, Mr.
K. Ohta, Mr. H. Saito, Mr. S. Hoshijima, and many
provincial agricultural and sociological experts.

Portions of drafts for this book have appeared in
the Daily Telegraph, World's Work, Manchester Guardian,
New East, Asia, Japan Chronicle and Christian World.
I am indebted to the World's Work and Asia for some
additional illustrations from blocks made from my photo-
graphs, and to the New East for some sketches by Miss
Elizabeth Keith.

CONTENTS
STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE (AICHI)

CHAPTER PiOE

I. The Mercy of Buddha .... 1

II. " Good People are not Sufficiently

Precautious" 8

III. Early-Rising Societies and Other

Ingenuous Activities .... 14

IV. " The Sight of a Good Man is Enough " 24

V. CoUNTRY-HOUSE LiFE .... 34

VI. Before Okunitama-No-Miko-Kami . . 45

VII. Of " Devil-gon " and Yosogi ... 56

THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD

VIII. The Harvest from the Mud ... 68
IX. The Rice Bowl, the Gods and the Nation 80

BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES: THE APOSTLE
AND THE ARTIST

X. A Troubler of Israel .... 90
XI. The Idea of a Gap .... 98

2 xvii

xviii CONTENTS

ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND BACK)

CHAPTER '^™

XII. To THE Hills (Tokyo, Saitama, Tochigi

AND Fukushima) . • • .107

XIII. The Dwellers in the Hills (Fukushima) 119

XIV. Shrines and Poetey (Niigata and

TOYAMA) 132

XV. The Nun's Cell (Nagano) . . .140

IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE

XVI. Problems behind the Picturesque
(Saitama, Gumma, Nagano and Yaman-
ashi) . 146

XVII. The Birth, Bridal and Death of the

Silk-worm (Nagano) .... 153

XVIII. " Girl Collectors " and Factories

(Nagano and Yamanashi) . . .161

XIX. " Friend-Love-Society's " Grim Tale . 167

FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE WEST

COAST

XX. " The Garden where Virtues are
Cultivated " (Fukushima and Yama-
gata) 175

XXI. The " Tanomoshi " (Yamagata) , . 182

BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST

XXII. " Bon " Songs and the Silent Priest
(Yamagata, Akita, Aomori, Iwate,
MiYAGi, Fukushima and Ibaraih) . 189

XXIII. A Midnight Talk .... 200

CONTENTS xix

THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU

OHAPIBR PAQB

XXIV. Landlords, Priests and " Basha "

(TOKUSHIMA, KOCHI AND KaGAWA) . 207

XXV. " Special Tribes " (Ehime) . . 219

XXVI. The Story of the Blind Headman

(Ehime) 226

THE SOUTH-WEST OF JAPAN

XXVII. Up-Country Oratory (Yamaguchi) . 285

XXVIII. Men, Dogs and Sweet Potatoes

(Shimane) 248

XXIX. Friends of Lafcadio Hearn (Shimane,

ToTTORi and Hyogo) . . . 258

TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE (NAGANO)

XXX. The Life of the Peasants and their

Priests ...... 262

XXXI. " Bon " Season Scenes . . .272

IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

XXXII. Progress of Sorts (Shidzuoka and

Kanagawa) ..... 288

XXXIII. Green Tea and Black (Shidzuoka) . 292

EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

XXXIV. A Country Doctor and his Neigh-

bours (Chiba) ..... 297

XXXV. The Husbandman, the Wrestler and
the Carpenter (Saitama, Gumma and
Tokyo) 809

XXXVI. " They feel the Mercy of the Sun "

(Gumma, Kanagawa and Chiba) . 321

XX CONTENTS

REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO

CHAFTEB PAQB

XXXVII. Colonial Japan and its Un-Japanese

Ways 384

XXXVIII. Shall the Japanese eat Bbead and

Meat ? 348

XXXIX. Must the Japanese make theik own

" YoFUKU " ? . . . .352

XL. The Problems of Japan . . 358

Appendices ....... 373

Index ........ 415

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

facing

xxvi

facing

Bath in an Agricultukal School . facing title-page
JOjitsu (and Rifles) at the same School „ „ „
Bygone Days in Japan ..... . xiii

The Room in which this Book was written

The Mercy of Buddha

" to rouse the village you must first rouse

THE Priest ".....
Plan of the Farmer's Symbolic Trees .
Adjusted Rice-fields ....
Library and Workshed of a Y.M.A.
Landowner's Son and Daughter .
Shrine in a Landowner's House .
Mr. Yamasaki, Dr. Nitobe, Author and Prof

Nasu ......

The House in which the Tea Ceremony took

Place ......

Author questioning Officials

Author planting Commemorative Trees

Rice Polishing by Foot Power

" Hibachi," a Flower Arrangement and

" Kakemono " .
School Shrine containing Emperor's Portrait
Fencing at an Agricultural School
War Mementoes — All Schools have some
A 200-Years-old Drawing of the Rice Plant
Scattering Artificial Manure in Adjusted

Paddies ......

Planting out Rice Seedlings

facing

46
46

62
62
63
63
69

78
79

XXll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Push-cart for Collection of Fertiliser
Minister of Agriculture's Efforts to keep

Price of Rice Down ....

Muzzled Editors ......

" The Japanese Carlyle " .

Mr. and Mrs, Yanagi .....

Children catching Insects on Rice-seed Beds
Masters of a Country School and Some

Children .....

Cultivation to the Hill-tops
Implements, Measures and Machines, and a

Bale of Rice .....
Movable Stage at a Festival
Farmhouse at which Mr. Uchimura Preached
Tenant Farmers' Houses
Author at the "Spirit Meeting".
Some Performers at the " Spirit Meeting "
In a Buddhist Nunnery
Japanese Grass-cutting Tools compared with

A Scythe .....

Child -collectors of Villagers' Savings
Nuns Photographed in a " Cell " .
Students' Study at an Agricultural School
Teachers of a Village School
Girls carrying Bales of Rice
Sericultural School Students
Silk Factories in Kamisuwa .
Village Assembly-room ....

Archery at an Agricultural School .
Cultivation of the Hillside
Railway Station " Bento " and Pot of Tea
A Scarecrow ......

The Blind Headman and his Collecting-bag
Mr. Yanaghita in his Coronation Ceremony

Robes .......

Portable Apparatus for raising Water

facing 79

facing

87
91
94
94
95

95
110

111
126
126
127
127
127
142

142
143
143
143
158
158
158
159
159
174
174
175
. 198
facing 206

206
206

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Village School with Portrait of Florence
Nightingale ....

River-beds in the Summer

School Shrine for Emperor's Portrait

Author addressing Lafcadio Hearn Meeting

A Peasant Proprietor's House

Gravestones reassembled after Paddy
Adjustment .....

Temple in which this Chapter was written

Fire Engine and Primitive Figures

Young Men's Club-room

Memorial Stones .

Roof protected against Storms by Stones

Off to the Upland Fields

Farmer's Wife

Mother and Child .

A Cradle ....

Fire Alarm and Observation Post

Rack for Drying Rice .

Village Crematorium

Dog helping to pull Jinrikisha

Author, Mr. Yamasaki and Youngest Inhabit
ANTS. ......

"ToRii" AT the Shrine of the Fox God

Tablets recording Gifts to a Temple .

Inside the " Shoji " . . . .

Automatic Rice Polisher

Author in a Crater ....

A Type of Wayside Monuments .

Giant Radish or " Daikon " .

Cutting Grass

facing

XXlll

FAGB

206
207
238
238
239

239
263
265
266
266
267
269
273
275
279
281
294
294
294

294
295
295
310
310
310
311
311
367

CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
AND OFFICIAL TERMS

The prices given in the text (but not in the footnotes and Appendix) were
recorded before the War inflation began. The War was followed by a
severe financial crisis. Professor Nasu wrote to me during the summer of
1921 :

" You are very wise to leave the figures as they stood. It is useless to
try to correct them, because they are still changing. The price of rice,
which did not exceed 15 yen per koku when you were making your research
work, exceeded 50 yen in 1919, and is now struggling to maintain the price
of 25 yen. Taking at 100 the figures for the years 1915 or 1916 — for-
tunately there is not much difference between these two years — ^the prices
of six leading commodities reached in 1919 an average of about 250. After
1919 the prices of some conunodities went still higher, but mostly they did
not change very much ; on the other hand, recently the prices of many
commodities — among them rice and raw silk especially — ^have been coming
down and this downward movement is gradually extending to all other
commodities. From these considerations I deduce that the index number
of general commodities may be safely taken as 200 when your book appeMS.
The reader of your book has simply to double the figures given by you — that is
the figures of 1915 and 1916 — in order to get a rough estimate of present prices."

Where exact statements of area and yield are necessary, as in the study
of the intense agriculture of Japan, local measures are preferable to our
equivalents in awkward fractions. Further, the measvires used in this
book are easily remembered, and no serious study of Japanese agriculture
on the spot is possible without remembering them. While, however,
Japanese cvirrency, weights and measures have been uniformly used,
equivalents have been supplied at every place in the book where their
omission might be reasonably considered to interfere with easy reading.
The following tables are restricted to currency, weights and measures
mentioned in the book;

MONEY 1

Yen = roughly (at the time notes for the book were made) a florin or half
a dollar = 100 sen.
Sen — a farthing or half cent = 10 rin.

LONG

Ri — roughly 2J miles.

Shahu (roughly 1 ft.) = 11-93 in.

Ri are converted into miles by being multiplied by 2'44.

SQUARE
Bi (roughly 6 sq. miles) = 5-955 sq. nules.

Gho (sometimes written, Chobu) (roughly 2i acres) = 2-450 acres =
10 tan = 3,000 tsuboi

1 Exchange in 1916 ; in 1921 the yen is worth 2s. 8d.
xxiv

CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES xxv

Tan or Tambu (roughly J acre) = 0-245 acres = 10 se = 300 bu.

Bu or Tsubo (roughly 4 sq. yds.) = 3-953 sq. yds.

An acre is about 4 tan 10 bu or 1,200 bu or tsubo (an urban measure).
The size of rooms is reckoned by the number of mats, which are ordinarily
6 shaku in length and 3 shaku in breadth.

CAPACITY

Koku (roughly 40 gals, or 5 bush.) = 39-703 gals, or 4-960 bush. =
10 to. Accorditig to American measurements, there are 47-653 gals,
(liquid) and 5-119 bush, (dry) in a, koku. A koku of rice is 313J lbs.
(British).

A koku of imported rice is, however, 330J lbs. The following koku must
also be noted : ordinary barley, 231 lbs. ; naked barley 301-1 lbs. ; wheat
288-7 lbs. ; proso millet, 247-9 lbs. ; foxtail millet, 280-9 lbs. ; barnyard
millet, 165-2 lbs.; briokaheat, 247-9 lbs. ; maize, 289-2 lbs. ; soya beans,
286-5 lbs. ; azuki (red) beans, 319-9 lbs. ; horse beans, 266-6 lbs. ; peas,
306-5 lbs.

Hyd (roughly 2 bush.) = 1-985 bush. = 4 to = bale of rice.

To (roughly 4 gals, or J bush.) = 3-970 gals, or -496 bush, or 1-985 pecks
= 10 sho.

Sho (roughly IJ qts.) = 1-588 qts. or 0-198 pecks or 108J cub. in. =
10 go.

Go (roughly J pint) = -3176 pints or 0-019 pecks.

Rice is not bagged but baled, and a bale is 4 to or 1 hy5.

WEIGHT

Kwan or itcomme '(roughly SJ lbs.) = 8-267 lbs. av. or 10-047 lbs. troy
= 1,000 momme.
Kin (catty) = 1-322 lbs. av. or 1-607 troy = 160 momme.
Momme = 2-116 drams or 2-41 1 dwts. According to American measure-
ments a momme is 0-132 oz. av. and 0-120 oz. troy.
Hyakkin (picul) = 100 kin = 132-277 lbs.
A stone is 1'693, a cwt. is 13"547, and a ton 270 "950 kwamme.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE TERMS

Ken. — Prefecture. There are forty-three ken and Hokkaido. Ken
and f u are made up of the former sixty-six provinces. Sometimes the name
of the ken and the name of the capital of the ken are the stime : example,
Shidzuoka-ken, capital Shidzuoka.

Fu. — Three prefectures are municipal prefectures and are called not
ken but fu. They are Tokyo-fu, Kyoto-f u and Osaka-fu.

Oun (kori). — ^Division of a prefecture, a county or rural district. There
are 636 gun. Gun are now beiug done away with.

Shi. — City. There are seventy-nine cities.

Cho. — A town or rather a district preponderatingly urban. There are
1,333 cho.

Machi. — Japanese name for the Chinese character oho.

Son. — A village or rather a district preponderatingly rural. There are
10,839 son.

Mura. — Japanese name for a Chinese character son.

A true idea of the Japanese village is obtained as soon as one mentally
defines it as a eommvme. There may be a rural community called son
or a municipal community called oho. The cho or son consists of a number of
oaza, that is, big aza, which in turn consists of [a number of ko-aza or
small aza. A ko-aza may consist of twenty or thirty dwellings, that is,
a hamlet, or it may be only one dwelling. It may be ten acres in extent
or fifty. I foimd that the population of a particular municipality was
10,000 in seven big oaza comprising twenty-two ko-aza.

THE

FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN

STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE
(AICHI) 1

CHAPTER I

THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

The only hard facts, one learns to see as one gets older, are the facts of
feeling. Emotion and sentiment are, after all, incomparably more solid
than any statistics. So that when one wanders hack in memory through
the field one has traversed in diligent search of hard facts, one comes back
bearing in one's arms a Sheaf of Feelings. — Havbloce Ellis.

One day as I walked along a narrow path between rice
fields in a remote district in Japan, I saw a Buddhist priest
coming my way. He was rosy-faced and benign, broad-
shouldered and a little rotimd. He had with him a string
of small children. I stood by to let him pass and lifted my
hat. He bowed and stopped, and we entered into con-
versation. He told me that he was taking the children to a
festival. I said that I should like to meet him again. He
offered to come to see me in the evening at my host's house.
When he arrived, and I asked him, after a little polite
talk, what was the chief difficulty in the way of improving
the moral condition of his village, he answered, " I am."

We spoke of Buddhism, and he complained thatitsTects
were " too aristocratic." WTien his own sect of Buddhism,
Shinshu7~Was "started; he said, it was something "quite
democratic for the common people." But with the lapse

1 The chapters in this section are based on notes of several visits paid
to Aiohi, which is in the middle of Japan, and agriculturally and socially
one of the most interesting of the prefectures. It is three prefectures
distant from Tokyo.

2 THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

of time this democratic sect had also " become aristo-
cratic." " Though the founder of Shinshu wore flaxen
clothing, Shinshu priests now have glittering costumes.
And everyone has heard of the magnificence of the Kyoto
Hongwanji" (the great temple at Kyoto, the head-

i quarters of the sect).' " Contrary to the principles of
religion and democracy," people thought of the priest and

I the temple " as something beyond their own Uves." All

I this stood in the way of improvement.

The fashion in which many landowners " despised
exertion and lived luxuriously " was another hindrance.
These men looked down on education, " thinking them-
selves clever because they read the newspapers." Land-
lords of this sort were fond of curios, and kept their capital
in such things instead of in agriculture. Sellers of curios
visited the village too often. A wise man had called the
curio-seller the " Spirit of Poverty " (Bimbogami). He
said that the Spirit visited a man when he became rich —
in order to bring curios to him ; and again when he became
poor — in order to take them away from him ! After he
became poor the Spirit of Poverty never visited him again.
Yet another drawback to rm-al progress was petty
political ambition. People slandered neighbours who
belonged to another party and they would not associate
with them. Such party feeling was one of the bad in-
fluences of civilisation.

Further, "a mercenary spirit and materialism" had
to be fought in the village. There was not, however,
much trouble due to drink, and there was no gambling
now. There might still be impropriety between young
people— formerly young men used to visit the factory
girls — but it was rare. Lately there had been land specu-
lation, and some of those who made money went to tea-
houses to see geisha.

There was in the neighbourhood, this Buddhist pastor
went on, a temple belonging to the same sect as his own,
and he was on friendly terms with its priest. It was good
discipline, he said, for two priests to be working near one

* Throughout this book an attempt has been made to preserve in trans-
lation something of the character of the Japanese phraseology.

BEFORE THE SHRINE 8

another if they were of the same sect, for their work was
compared. In answer to my enquiry, the old man said
that he preached four days a month. Each service con-
sisted of reading for an hour and then preaching for two
hours. About 150 or 200 persons would attend. He had
also a service every morning from five to six. In addition
to these gatherings in the temple he conducted services in
farmers' houses. " I feel rather ashamed sometimes," he
said, " when I listen to the good sermons of Christians."

As the priest was taking leave he told me that he was
going to a farmer's house in order to conduct a service. I
asked to be allowed to accompany him. He kindly agreed,
and invited me to stay the night in his temple.

When I reached the farmhouse there were there about
two dozen kneeUng people, including members of the
family. On the coming of the priest, who had gone to
the temple to put on his robes, the farmer threw open the
doors of the family shrine and lighted the candles in it.
The priest knelt down by the shrine and invited me to
kneel near him. In a few words he told the people why I
was in the district. Whereupon the farmer's aged mother
piped," We heard that a tall man had come, but to think that
we should see him and be in the same room with hi;n ! "

When he had prayed, the priest read from a roll of the
Shinshu scripture which he had taken reverently from
a box and a succession of wrappings. Afterwards he
preached from a " text," continuing, of course, to kneel
as we did. A flickering Ught fell upon us from a lamp
hanging from a beam. The room was pervaded with
incense from an iron censer which the farmer gently swung.
The worshippers told their beads, and in intervals between
the priest's sentences I heard the murmiu- of fervent prayer.

The priest preached his sermon with his eyes shut^ and
I could watch Jtiim narrowly. It is not so often that one
sees an old man with a sweet face. But there was sweet-
ness in both the face and voice of this priest. He spoke
slowly and clearly, sometimes pausing for a little between
his sentences as if for better inspiration, as a Quaker will
sometimes do in speaking at meeting. His tones were no
higher than could be heard clearly in the room. There was

4 THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

nothing of the exhorter in this man. His talk did not
sound like preaching at all. It was like kind, friendly talk
at the fireside at a solemn time. " Faith, prayef7mofaIityT
these liTone are necessary," was the burden of the simple
address. " We have faith by divine providence ; out of
our thanksgiving comes prayer, and we cannot but be good."
It was plain that the old women loved their priest. In the
front of the congregation were three crones gnarled in
hands and face. When the sermon of an hour or so came
to an end they spoke quaveringly of the mercy of Buddha
to them, and of their own feebleness to do well. The old
priest gently offered them comfort and counsel.

After the service, in the light of the priest's paper lan-
tern, I made my way along the road to the temple. At
length I found myself mounting the lichened stone steps
to the great closed gates. The priest drew the long wooden
bolt and pushed one gate creakingly back. We went by a
paved pathway into the deeper shadow of the temple.
Then a light glowed from the side of the building, and we
were in the priest's house. It was like a farmer's house
only more refined in detail.

About half-past four in the morning I was awakened by
the booming of the temple bell. It is the sound whichjaf
all delights mj;he Far East is mo£t,memora^ I got up,
and,'lbllowing the example of my host, had a bath in the
open, and dressed. -"

Then I was lighted along passages into the public part
of the temple. The priest with an acolyte began service
at the middle altar. Afterwards he proceeded to a side
altar. At one stage of the service he chanted a hymn which
ran something like this :

From the virtues and the mercies of divine providence we

get faith, the worth of which is boundless.
The ice of petty care and trouble which froze our hearts

is melted.
It has become the water of divine illumination, bearing

us on to peace.
The more care and trouble, the greater the illumination

and the reward.

I knelt on the outside of the congregational group. It

THE LEPER, THE LIZARD AND THE LIAR 5

was cold as the great doors were slid open from time to
time and the kneeling figures grew in number to about
forty. Day broke and a few sparrows twittered by the
time the first part of the service was over.

The priest then took up his lamp and low table, and,
coming without the altar rail, knelt down m the midst of
the congregation. In this familiar relation with his people
he delivered a homily in a conversational tone. Buddha
was to mankind as a father to his children, he said. If a
man did bad things but repented, his father would be
more delighted than if he got rich. The way of serving
Buddha was^to feel his love^ To ask of the'ncE or of a
master was supplication, but we did not need to supplicate
Buddha. Our love of Buddha and his love for us would
become one thing. Carelessness, an evil spirit, doubt :
these were the enemies. Gold was beautiful to look at, but
if thegold stuck in one's ej^ssothat oiie could hot see, how
then? The true essence of belief was the abandonment of
ourselves to divine providence.

So the speaker went on, pressing home his thoughts with
anecdote or legend. There was the tale of a woman whose
character benefited when her husband became a leper.
Another story was of an injured lizard which was fed for
many days by its mate. We were also told of a mischievous
fellow who tried to anger a believer. The ne'er-do-weel
went to the man's house and called him a liar. The believer
thanked him for his faithful dealing, and said that it might
be true that he was a liar. He would be glad, he said, to
be given further advice after his wife had warmed water
in order that his visitor might wash his feet. " The mind
of the vagabond was thereupon changed."

The rays of light from the lamp illumined the large
Buddha-like shaven head and mild countenance of the
priest and the labour-worn faces of his flock around him.
Two weatherbeaten men curiously resembled Highland
elders. I saw that they, an old woman and a young
mother with a child tied on her back kept their eyes fixed
on the preacher. It was plain that in the service they
found strength for the day.

I was in a reverie when the priest ended his talk. To

6 THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

my embarrassment he begged me to come with him within
the altar rail and speak to the people. I had been quick-
ened to such a degree by the experience of the previous
night and by this service at dawn that I stood up at once.
But there seemed to be not one word at my call, and my
knees knocked because of cold and shyness. I grasped
the chilly brass altar rail, and, as I met the gaze of friendly,
sun-tanned, care-rutted alien faces, which yet had the look
of " kent folk," I marvellously found sentence following
sentence. What I said matters nothing. What I felt was
the imity of all religion, my veneration for this rare priest,
a sense of kinship with these worshippers of another face"
and faith, and a realisation of the elemental things which
lie at the basis of international understandiiig. SeveraT
old men and women came up to me and bowed and made
little speeches of kindness and cordiaUty. Six was striking
on a clock in the priest's house as the doors of the temple
were shd open, the great crj^Jtomeria ' which guard the
village fane stood forth augustly in the morning light, and
the congregation went out to its labour.

As I knelt at breakfast and ate my rice and pickles and
drank my miso soup,' the priest, after the manner of a
Japanese with an honoured guest, did not take food but
waited upon me. He asked if the English clergy wore a
costume which marked them off from the people. He
liked the way of some of our preachers who wore ordinary
clothes and eschewed the title of " reverend." He was
also taken by the idea of the Quaker meeting at which
there is silence until someone feels he has a message to
utter. As to the future of Buddhism, he deeply regretted
to say that many priests were a generation behind the age.
If the priests were " more democratic, better educated and
more truly^eligious," then they might be able to keep hold
of young men. He knew of one priest in Tokyo who had
a dormitory for university students.

The priest presented his wife, a kindly woman full of
character. " This is my wife," he said ; " please teach

' Cryptomeria japonica, or in Japanese, sugi, allied to the sequoia, yew
and cypress.
' Miao, bean paste.

WE ARE TO BECOME CONTENT'

her." I spoke of a kind of kindergarten which I had
learnt had been conducted at the temple for five years.
" We merely play with the children," she said. " I had
the plan of it from the kindergarten of a missionary," her
husband added. The priest and his wife were kneeling
side by side in the still temple-room looking out on their
restful garden. Behind them was a screen the inscription
on which might be translated, " We
are to be thankful for our environ-
ment ; we are to become content
quite naturally by the gracious
influence of the universe and by
the strength of our own will."

I could learn nothing from the
priest concerning several helpful
organisations which I had heard
that the villagers owed to his
influence and exertions. But the
manager of the village agricultural
association told me that for a
quarter of a century Otera San (Mr.
Temple) had superintended the
education of the young people,
that under his guidance the village
had a seven years' old co-operative
credit and selling society, 294
families belonged to a poultry society, 320 men and women
gathered to study the doctrines of Ninomiya (whom we in
the West know from a little book by a late Japanese
Ambassador in London, called For His People), and the
young men's association performed its discipline at half-
past five in the morning in the winter and at four o'clock
in the sunuuer.

' To BOTJSE THE VllLAOE
YOTT MUST rlBST BOUSE

THE Priest "
(Autograph of Otera San)

CHAPTER II

" GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY PRECAUTIOUS "

Je ne propose rien, je n'impose rien, j'expose. — De la liberte du travail

He had been through Tokyo University, but his hands
were rough with the work of the rice fields. " I resent the
fact that a farmer is considered to be socially inferior to a
townsman," he said. " I am going to show that the ia-
come of a farmer who is diligent and skilful may equal that
of a Minister of State. I also propose to build a fine house,
not out of vanity, but in order to show that an honest
farmer can do as well for himself as a townsman."

When I asked the speaker to tell me something about
himself he went on : " My father was a follower of a pupil
of the great Ninomiya. Schools of frugal living and high
ideals were common in the Tokugawa period.' The object
sought was the education of heart and spirit. At night
when I was in bed my father used to kneel by me,'' his eldest
son, and say, ' When you grow big you must become a
great man and distinguish our family name.' This in-
struction was given to me repeatedly and it went deeply
into my heart."

" When I became a young man," he continued, " I had
two friends. We made promises to each other. One said,
' I will become the greatest scholar in Japan.' The
second said, ' I will become the greatest statesman.' The
third, myself, said, ' I will be the greatest rice grower in
this cpuntry.' If we all succeeded we were to build beauti-
ful houses and invite each other to them.

1 Th^t is, before the Revolution of half a century ago, when the Toku-
gawa Shogun resigned his powers to the Emperor.

2 The Japanese bed, futon, consists of a soft mattress of cotton wool,
two or three inches thick. It is spread on the floor, which itself consists
of mats of almost the same thickness, 6 ft. long by 3 ft, wide

"I WAS MADE TO THINK" 9

" I did not graduate at the University because, by the
entreaty of my father, when I reached twenty-one, I left
Tokyo in order to become a practical farmer. It is twenty-
one years since I began farming. I consulted with skilful
agriculturists and then I saw my way to make a plan.
Rice in my native place is inferior. I improved it for three
or four years, I gained the first gold prize at the pre-
fectural show. Some years later I obtained the first prize
at the exhibition which was held by five prefectiires
together. Later still I received the first prize at the exhi-
bition for eighteen prefectures, also the first prize at the
exhibition of the National Agricultural Association.
Further, I was appointed a judge of rice and travelled about.

" I consumed a great deal of time in doing this pubUc
work. One day I was made to think. A collector for a
charity said in my hearing that he expected larger sub-
scriptions from practical men because though public men
were estemeed by society their economic power was small.
I at once resolved that before doing any more public work
I should put myself in a soimd financial position.

" As I thought over the matter it seemed to me that it
was not to be expected that a public man should be able
to do his really best work if his financial position were not
sound. Again, could he have lasting influence with people
in practical affairs if his own practical affairs were not in
good order ? ' At any rate I determined not to go out to
any more exhibitions or lectures except those which were
remunerative, and I resolved to devote myself as my first
duty to my farming.

" I set to work and managed my land, 3 cho (a cho is
2| acres), so as to obtain the gross income of an M.P. [The
reader could scarcely have a more striking illustration of
the intensity with which Japanese land is cultivated —

^ Most of the really big men of Australia have left political life in com-
paratively impoverished circumstances. Not only did Sir Henry Parkes
die poor. Sir George Reid took the High Commissionership in London ;
Sir Graham Berry was provided with a small annuity ; Sir George Dibbs
was made the manager of a State savings bank ; Sir Edmund Barton was
lifted to the High Court Bench. — Ti/mea, January 11, 1921.

To the last day of his life, executions were levied in his house, —
Lord Bosebery on Pitt.

10 "GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT PRECAUTIOUS"

the average area is under 3 acres per family.] I am now
working about 4 cho (10 acres). Later on I am going to
farm 7 cho (15J acres) and from that I am expecting the
income of a Minister.' I have already collected the
materials for my villa, for I am approaching my goal. One
of my two friends, who is also forty years of age, is a dis-
tinguished chemist in the Imperial Agricultural College.
My other friend, who is forty-four, is Secretary of the
Korean Government."

The indomitable experimenter swallowed another cupful
of tea and declared that " in order to be prosperous, all the
members of the family must work." All the members of
his family did work. His wife was strong and there were
five healthy children. He used the ordinary farm imple-
ments and his livestock consisted of only a horse and a few
hens. The home farm was five miles from the station.
The outlying farms were scattered in five villages —
" there are always spendthrift lazy fellows willing to sell
their land." " I have a firm beUef," the speaker added
complacently, " that agriculture is the most honest, the
most sincere, the most interesting, the most secure and
the most profitable calling."

" Very often," he went on, " good people are not suf-
ficiently precautious " — I give the excellent word coined by
my interpreter. " They spend for the pubhc good, and in
the end they are left poor. Renowned, rich fanailies have
come to a miserable condition by such action. What they
have done may have been good. But they are reduced to
pauperism and they are laughed at by many persons.
People jeer that they pretended to do good, yet they could
not do good to themselves. If all people who work for the
pubhc benefit are laughed at at last — and many are — ^it will
come to be thought that to work for the public benefit is
not good. Therefore I think that the man who would work
for the public good must be careful in his own affairs. He
must not be a poor man if he is to help public business.
However philanthropic he may be, if his financial position
is not strong he cannot go on long. He will be stopped on
his good way. He cannot help other people. Therefore

' For his figures see Appendix I.

"A NEEDLE IN YOUR HEAD" 11

I am now gathering wealth for strengthening my financial
position as a means to attain the higher end."

As the speaker awaited my judgment on his career, I
ventured to suggest that gifts, qualities and inspiration
which made a man a public man did not necessarily equip
him for being a great success in business life. The question
was, perhaps, whether the tjrpe of man who was pre-eminently
successful in promoting his own pecuniary interests was
necessarily the best type of public man. Was the average
character equal to the strain of many years of concentra-
tion on money-making to the exclusion of pubUc interests ?
When men emerged from the sphere of concentrated money-
making, were they worth so very much as public men ?
Might not the values of things have altered a little for
them ? Might it not have a shrivelling effect on the heart
to resist applications which must be refused when the
strengthening of one's financial position was regarded as
the chief object in life ?

At this point our host, Mr. Yamasaki, the respected
principal of the big agricultiu:al school of the prefecture
and a well-known rural author and speaker, broke in with
the ejaculation, "He has got a needle in your head" — the
Japanese equivalent for " touching the spot " — and con-
tinued : " Surely he is right who through his life offers
fi:eely what he may have as to members of his own family.
I give away many pamphlets and I have guests. I could
save in these directions. But I am not doing it. I am con-
tent if I can support my family. I gave a savings book to
each of my five children. When the boy becomes twenty-
one he will have enough to finish at the imiversity or start
as a sipall merchant so as not to be a parasite. My girls
will be provided with enough to furnish the costs of modest
marriage. If I did more I might perhaps become greedy."

I cannot say that the farmer who had so kindly outlined
his life's programme was impressed either by ova host's
views or by mine, but he told us that he now spent 5 per
cent, of his income on public purposes, and that 150 yen
received for giving lectures was spent on books and recrea-
tion " for enlarging mind and heart." He happened to
mention that, though his family^was of the^Zen sect of

12 "GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT PRECAUTIOUS"

Buddhism, he was a Shintoist. It is difficult to believe
that a genuine Buddhist could have evolved such a life
scheme. There is certainly a Shinto symboUsm in his plan
of tree planting before his house. He has set there, in the
order shown, eleven pines which he named as marked :

Thieves

Idleness

t t

Quarrels Sickness

Plan of the Eleven Symbolio Trees which the Faemee Planted

OTTTSIDB HIS HOTJSE AUD THE EviLS (SEPBESENTED BY AbbOWS)
FBOM WHICH THEY ABB SHIELDING HiM

The virtues inscribed on this plan are the guardians of
the farmer and his family, which is represented in the
middle of it. The words behind the arrows represent the
character of the attacks to which the farmer conceives
himself and his family to be exposed. Cotu-age is imagined
as going before and Wisdom as protecting the rear.

The talk turned to some advice which had been given
to farmers to lay out " economic gardens." They were to
plant no trees but fruit trees. To this an old farmer of
ova company replied : "If you are too economical your
children will become mercenary. Some families were too

THE RISKS OF ECONOMY 13

economical and cut down beautiful trees, planting instead
economical ones. Those families I have seen come to an
evil end. The man who exercises rigid economy may be a
good man, but his children can know Uttle of his real
motives and must be wrongly influenced by his conduct."
We all agreed that there was nowadays too much talk
about money-making in rural Japan. " Even I," laughed
the owner of the symbolic trees, " planted not persimmons
but pines."

CHAPTER III

EAELY-RISING SOCIETIES AND OTHER INGENUOUS
ACTIVITIES

I should be heartily sorry if there were no signs of partiality. On the
other hand, there is, I trust, no importunate advocacy or tedious assenta-
tion.— ^MOBLEY

" The alarum clocks for waking us at four o'clock in the
summer and five in the winter " — it was the chairman of
a village Early-Rising Society who was speaking to me —
" are placed at the houses of the secretaries, and each
member is in turn a secretary. The duty of a secretary,
when the alarum clock strikes, is to get up and visit the
houses of all the members allotted to him and to shout
for the young men until they answer. Each member on
rising walks to the house of the secretary of his division
and writes his name on the record of attendances. Then
the member goes to the shrine, where we fence and wrestle
for a time. At first we thought that if we fenced and
wrestled early in the morning we should be tired for
our work, but we found that it was not so.

" Sometimes a clock gets damaged and does not ring,
so a few of us may be getting up later that morning. Or
a man becomes afraid of sleeping too late, fears his clock
is wrong, and gets up at 3 o'clock and then goes off to waken
members. Hence complaints. Some cunning fellows ask
their friends or brothers to write down for them their names
on the list of attendances. But we find out their deceit
by their handwriting. It is very difficult to form the habit
of early rising, because members are not expected to report
at the secretaries' houses on a rainy day. As there is no
control over them that day, they are easy in their minds and
sleep on. Thus they break the habit of early rising that

THE DRUMS OF THE VILLAGE 15

they are forming. Getting up early is necessary not only
because it is good to begin work early but because early
rising overcomes the habit of gadding about at night which
is customary in many villages.

" You may say that all this is a great deal to ask of
young men," the chairman continued. " But if you ask
from them comfortable practices only, how can you expect
from them a remarkable result ? Young men should
ponder this and be willing to exert themselves." Later on
it was explained to me that it had been found that it took
a great deal of time for the secretaries to call up all the
members in the morning by shouting to them, " so the
secretary obtained bugles ; but even the bugles were not
heard everjrwhere, so they were changed to drums, and
now five drums go round our village every morning."

In every village of Japan there is a young men's associa-
tion, which is by no means to be confounded with the world-
encircling Y.M.C.A.' The village Y.M.A. of Japan is an
institution of some antiquity and it has nothing whatever
to do with religious effort. One day, when I was staying
in a rural district, I was invited to a remoter part in order
to see something of the discipline that the members of a
group of young men's associations were imposing on them-
selves. The members of this group of Y.M.A. belonged
to the branches established in a village of nineteen aza,
that is hamlets. This fact, with the further fact that the
village containing the nineteen aza had four elementary
schools and one higher school, will show that a Japanese
village may be much larger than a Western one.

Nearly six hundred young men were in the parade. They
were dressed exactly alike in the tight blue calico trousers
and kimono of jacket length which the Japanese farmer
ordinarily wears. Each man had the usual obi (waist
scarf) tied round his kimono, and in the obi was thrust the
small cotton towel which Japanese carry with them
everjTvhere. The young men wore puttees, waraji (straw
sandals) and caps. It is only of late that the Japanese
worker has taken to wearing head-gear, or at any rate

' There are, however, 11,000 members of Y.M.C.A. in Japan. There
is also a Y.W.C.A. with a considerable membership.

16 EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES

head-gear other than he could contrive with his towel. The
physical condition of the yoiing fellows was good and their
evolutions with dummy " rifles " were smart and skilful.
The paraders seemed lost in their desire to do their best
for their credit's sake and their own good. After the first
movements, the " troops " with " rifles " held as if there
were bayonets at the end, made rushes with loud cries.
The secret of this somewhat siu-prising display far away in
the heart of Japan was that the work of the young men
had been done under the direction of two fit, be-medaUed
army surgeons, reserve officers, who were present in order
to answer my questions.

Every morning half an hour before sunrise these Y.M.A.
members assemble in the grounds of their Shinto shrine
or of their school, where they exercise until the sun shows
itself. In the evenings after work they also fence, wrestle,
lift weights and develop their wrists. This wrist develop-
ment is done by two youths grasping a pole, one at either
end, and then trying to rotate it one against the other.

The members endeavour to cultivate their minds as well
as their bodies, and they also observe in their dress a self-
denying ordinance. On ceremonial occasions they permit
themselves to wear a full-length kimono and the hakama or
divided skirt, but they deny themselves the third article
of a Japanese man's full dress, the haori or silk overcoat.
An effort is also made to dispense with the use of " luxuri-
ous " geta (the national wooden pattens).'

The object of all this varied discipline is to develop
physique, self-control, self-respect and what the Japanese
call the spirit of association, or, as we might say, good
fellowship. The spirit of association is needed in order to
promote greater administrative, educational and social
efficiency. The modern Japanese village is no longer an
historical but a political imit which covers a considerable
district. It is, as I have explained, a combination of
clusters of aza (hamlets). Each of these aza has its local
sentiment, and this local sentiment when untouched by
outside influences tends to become selfish, narrow and
prejudiced. If, however, anything is to be done in the
1 See Appendix II.

"TO ENLARGE PEOPLE'S IDEAS" 17

development of rural life there must be co-operation
between aza for all sorts of objects.

I was assured that in addition to the development of
physique, moral and the spirit of association, there was to be
seen, imder the influence of the Y.M.A., a development of
good manners and mental nimbleness. A special result
of early rising and discipline in one area had been that
" the habit of spending evening hours idly has died away,
immorality has diminished, singing loudly and foohshly
and boasting oneself have disappeared, while punctuahty
and respect for old age have increased." I was even assured
that parents — whom no true Japanese would ever dream of
attempting to reform at first hand — parents, I say, moved
by the physical and mental advance in their sons, have
" begun to practise greater punctuality."

After the drilling was over I was taken to a large elemen-
tary school and was called upon to address the young men,
who were kneeling in perfect files. Mr. Yamasaki followed
me and told the youths that Japanese were not so tall
as they might be, and that therefore their physique
" must be continuously developed." Nor were rural
conditions all they should be from a moral point of view.
Therefore, " every desire which interferes with the develop-
ment of your health or morality must be overcome."

Let me speak of another village. It numbers a thousand
famihes and it rises in the morning and goes to bed at night
by the soimd of the bugle. It has five public baths and a
notice-board of news " to enlarge people's ideas." The
shopkeepers are said to " work very dihgently, so things
are cheaper." The education of such of the young men
as are exempted from military service is continued on
Saturday evenings for four years. The Y.M.A., in addition
to the military discipliae, fencing, wrestling, weight-
lifting and pole-twisting of which I have spoken, exercises
itself in handwriting — which many Japanese practise
as an art during their whole lifetime — and in composing
the conventional short poem. I was gravely informed
that " the custom of spending money on sweet-stuft is
decreasiag." What this really means is that the young men
were not frequenting the sweet-stuft shops, which are staffed

18 EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES

by girls who are in many cases a greater temptation than
the sweets. The worthy members of this association
had " burnt their geta."

In some places Y.M.A. members give their labour when
a school teacher or a fellow member is building his house,
or they do repairs at the school. Bicycle excursions are
made to neighbouring villages in order to participate in
inter-Y.M.A. debates, or to study vegetable raising, fruit
culture or poultry keeping. The Japanese are much given
to " taking trips," and the special training which they
receive at school in making notes and plans results in every-
body having a notebook and being able to sketch a rough
route-plan for personal use, or for a stranger who may
ask his way.

Not a few associations favour members cutting each
other's hair once a fortnight, thus at one and the same
time saving money and curbing vanity. Several Y.M.A.S
publish cyclostyled monthlies. Others minutely investigate
the economic condition of their villages. Some Y.M.A.S
provide public " complaint boxes," and have boards up
asking for friendly help for soldiers billeted in the district.
One association has issued instructions to its members that
they are not to ride when in charge of ox-drawn carts.
The reason is that the ox is only partially imder control
and may injm-e a pedestrian — unwittingly, I am sure, for
the gentleness of the ox and even of the bull in harness
arrests one's attention. Many Y.M.A.S devote themselves
to cultivating improved qualities of rice or to breaking up
new land. Sometimes the land of the Shinto shrine is
cultivated. I have heard of Y.M.A.S in remote parts
having handed over to them the exclusive sale of saki.

I find a Y.M.A. counselling its members " not to speak
vulgar words in a crowd." There is also among the mem-
bers of Y.M.A.S a certain addiction to diary keeping for
moral as well as economic purposes. The diaries are
distributed by the associations and " afterwards examined
and rewarded " — a plan which would hardly work in the
West. There are Y.M.A.s which make a point of seeing
off conscripts with flags and music. Others have fallen
on the more economical plan of " writing to the conscript

"ABANDON SWEET-EATING" 19

as often as possible and helping with labour the family
which is suffering from the loss of his services." By some
Y.M.A.S " old people are respected and comforted." More
than one association has a practice of serving out red
and black balls to its members at the opening of every new
year, when good resolutions are in order, and at the end
of the year recalling either the red or the black according
to the degree to which the publicly announced good resolu-
tions have been kept. Among the good resolutions are :
to worship at the Shinto shrine or the Buddhist temple
regularly, to be tidier, to be more efficient in cropping the
land, to undertake work for the common good, to have
a secondary occupation in addition to farming, to sit
with more decorum at meals, to rise earlier, to visit the
graves of ancestors monthly, to be more considerate to
parents or elder brothers, and " not to remain idly at
people's houses."

One Y.M.A. decrees that a member found in a tea-house
in conversation with a geisha shall be fined 20 yen. There
is even a village in which the young men's association and
the young women's association have united to issue a
regulation providing that at night time members, in order
that their doings shall be public, shall carry lanterns
painted with the ideographs of their societies.'

With regard to the young women's associations, I
found that one of them studied domestic matters and good
manners, " asking questions and receiving answers." The
motto of the organisation was " Good Wives and Good
Mothers." A member, this Society believes, should be
" polite, gentle and warm-hearted, but with a strong Avill
inside and able to meet difficulties." Her hairdressing and
clothes " should not be luxurious," and she " must not run
after fashions." She must " respect Buddha and abandon
sweet-eating," for " taking food between meals is bad for
your health, for economy and for your posterity."

I^et us now hear something of Societies for the Cultivation
of Bice by Schoolboys. The lads become responsible for
the cultivation of a tan of their family land, or of a small
paddy, and they work it themselves with the help of such

1 For official action in regard to the Y.M.A.s, see later.

20 EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES

advice as the schoolmaster may give them. (The cultiva-
tion of a tan of a paddy, a quarter of an acre, is supposed
to need in a year about twenty-one days' labour of a man
working from simrise to simset.) The re'port of one boy
to which I turned in a collection of reports by members
of a rice-cultivation society showed that he was between
fourteen and fifteen. His diary of work and observations
was as follows :

June 5. — 4 to of herring applied.

June 7. — Locusts and other insects arrive.'

June 20. — 153 clumps of rice transplanted from the

seed bed.'
July 11. — Rice cultivated and 4 to of herring applied.
July 27. — First weeding.
Aug. 6. — Second weeding.
Aug. 8. — Locusts again.
Aug. 11. — Third weeding.
Sept. 10. — All ears shot.
Oct. 10. — Some plants suffering from bacillus.

It was further noted that the soil was sandy, that cold
spring water was percolating through the bottom of the
paddy field, that the aeration of the soil was bad and that
some plants were laid by wind. The young farmer ap-
pended to his report an excellent plan. He received marks
as follows : Method of planting, 15 ; levelling, 20 ; pro-
vision against insects, 5 ; general attention, 25 ; total, 65.
Some boys got as many as 99 marks.

A word concerning a Village Association for Promoting
Morality. One of the things it does is to assemble yearly
the whole population, old and young, " in order to get
friendly." The police meanwhile keep an eye open for
strangers who might take it into their heads to visit the
village on that day and help themselves from the heuses.
I may quote three poems in rough translations from a
speech made by a priest at the annual meeting :

The legs of a horse, the rudder of a boat, the pin of a fan,
and the sincerity of a man.

' ' The damage done by insects is estimated at 10 million yen a year.
In some parts locusts are roasted and eaten.
2 For an account of the processes of rice cultivation, see Chapter IX.

A VILLAGE'S VOLUNTARY TAXATION 21

Let your heart be pure and true and you need not pray

for the protection of the gods.
The bride brings many things with her to her new home,

but one thing more, the spirit of sincerity, will not

encumber her.

After these varied accoimts of rural merit, I could not
but listen with attention to a tale of village gamblers, the
offence of gambling having been " introduced by the ex-
cavators on the new railway." First the headman fined a
dozen young men. Then he made a raid and found among
the village sinners several members of his own council.
" The salaried officials were at a loss to know what to do,
and proposed to resign. But the headman brought the
prisoners together before the whole body of officials. He
spoke of the sufferings of the troops in Manchuria and the
heroic deaths among them. (It was the time of the Rus-
sian war.) ' Lest your offences should come to be known
by our soldiers and discourage them,' said the headman,
' I cannot but overlook your conduct.' It is thought that
gambling practically ceased from that time."

Local officials have a way of making the most of historic
events in order to touch the imagination of their villagers.
Many original undertakings were begun, for example, under
the inspiration of the Coronation. One village set about
raising a fund by a system of taxation under which inhabi-
tants contribute according to the following tariff :

Birth of a child, 10 sen (that is, 2|d. or 5 cents).

Wedding, 15 sen.

Adoption, 15 sen.

Graduation from the primary school, 10 sen ; advanced

school, 20 sen.
Teacher or official on appointment, 2 per cent, of salary ;

when salary is increased, 10 per cent, of increase.
When an official receives a prize of money from his

superior, 5 per cent.
Every villager to pay every quarter, 1 sen.

On the basis of this assessment it is expected that fifty-
seven years after the Coronation such a sum will have been
accumulated as will enable the villagers to live rate free.

22 EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES

Some villages have thanksgiving associations in connec-r
tion with Shinto shrines. Aged villagers are " respected
by being blessed before the shrine and by being given a
present." Worthy villagers who are not aged " receive
prizes and honour."

More than once when I went to a village I was welcomed
first by a parade of the Y.M.A., then by the school children
in rows, and finally in the school grounds by two lines of
venerable members of an Ex-Public Servants' Association.
The object of an E.P.S.A. is to strengthen the hands of the
present officials and to give honour to their predecessors.
A headman explained to me : " If ex-officials fell into
poverty or lacked public respect, people would not be
inclined to work for the public good. A former clerk in the
village office whom everybody had forgotten was working
as a labourer. But as a member of the association he was
seen to be treated with honour, so the children were im-
pressed. The funeral of such a man is apt to be lonely,
but when this man died all the members of the association
attended his funeral in ceremonial dress and offered some
money to his memory.^ His honour is great and the
villagers say, ' We may well work for the public benefit.' "

Every village in Japan has a Village Agricultural Associa-
tion. One V.A.A., which belongs to a village of less than
6,000 people, sees the fruit of its labours in the existence of
" 322 good manure houses." The gift of a plan and the
grant of a yen had prompted the building of most of them.
Then the organisation incites its members to cement the
ground below their dwellings. This is not so much for
the benefit of the farmer and his family as for the welfare
of their silkworms. A fly harmful to silkworms winters
in the soil, but it cannot find a resting-place in concrete.

A word may also be said about the way in which silkworm
rearers have been induced by the V.A.A. to keep the same
breed of caterpillar, so facilitating bulking of cocoons at
the association's co-operative sales. A small library of
silkworm-culture books has been started in the village, and

1 It is the practical Japanese custom to make a gift of money to a family
on the occasion of a death. The Emperor makes a present to the family
of a deceased statesman.

THE GIANT RADISH 23

there is a special pamphlet for yotmg men which they are
urged to keep in " their pockets and to study ten minutes
each day." A general library has 2,400 volumes divided
into eight circulating libraries. The cost of the building
which provides the library in chief, a meeting hall and also
a storehouse for cocoons has been defrayed by the com-
missions charged for the co-operative sale of cocoons.

Again, there used to be no cattle in the village, but now,
thanks to the purchase of young animals by the association,
and thanks to village shows, there are 103.

There is a competition to get the biggest yield of rice,
and there is also " an exhibition of crops." This exhibition
incidentally aims at ending trouble between landlord and
tenants due to complaints of the inferiority of the rice
brought in as rent. (Paddy-field rent is invariably paid in
rice.) These complaints are more directly dealt with by
the V.A.A, arbitrating between landlords and tenants who
are at issue. In addition to rice crop and cattle shows in
the village, there is a yearly exhibition of the products of
secondary industries, such as mats, sandals and hats.

The V.A.A. is also working to secure the planting of
hill-side waste. Some 300,000 tree seedlings have been
distributed to members of the Y.M.A., who " grow them
on," and, after examination and criticism, plant them out.
I must not omit to speak of the V.A.A.s' distribution of
moral and economic diaries of the type already referred to.
The vill?.gers, in the spirit of boy-scoutism, are " advised
to do one good thing in a day." I saw several of these
'diaries, well thumbed by their authors after having been
laboured at for a year. One yoimg farmer noted down on
the space for January 2 that he said his prayers and then
went daikon '■ pulling, and that daikon pulling (like our
mangold pulling) is a cold job.

1 The giant white radish which reaches 2 or 3 ft. in length and 3 in. or
more in diameter. There is also a correspondingly large turnip-shaped sort.

CHAPTER IV

" THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH "

It has been said that we should emulate rather than imitate them.
All I say is. Let us study them. — Matthew Arnold

Fob seven years in succession the men, old, middle-aged
and yoimg, who had done the most remarkable things in
the agriculture of the prefectiire had been invited to gather
in conference. I went to this annual " meeting of skilful
farmers." Among the speakers were the local governor and
chiefs of departments who had been sent down by the
Ministry of Agriculture and the Home Office. According
to our ideas, everybody but the luipractised speakers — ^the
expert farmers who were called from time to time to the
platform — spoke too long. But the kneeling audience
found no fault. Indeed, a third of it was taking notes.
It was an audience of seeking souls.

One of the impromptu speakers, a white-haired, toil-
marked farmer, told how forty years before he had gone to
the next prefecture and opened new land. " With his
spectacles and moustache," explained the chairman — if
the man who takes the initiative from time to time at a
Japanese meeting may be properly called a chairman —
" he looks like a gentleman ; but he works hard." And
the man showed his hands as a testimony to the severity
of his labours.

" It was in the winter," he said, " that I went away from
my home and obtained a certain tract of waste. I had no
acquaintance near. I brought some food, but when I fell
short I had no more. I had gone with my third boy. We
lived in a small hut and were in a miserable condition.
Then a fierce wind took oft the roof. It was at four in the
morning when the roof blew off. In February I began to
open a rice field. Gradually we got a cho. At length I

THE WEEPING FARMERS 25

opened another cho, but there was much gravel. Some of
my newly opened fields are very high up the hill. If you
chance to pass my house please come to see me. The maple
leaves are very beautiful and you can enjoy the sight of
many birds."

The early meetings of the expert farmers used to last
not one day but two, for the men delighted in narrating
their experiences to one another. Some of the audience
used to weep as the older men told their tales. The
farmers would sit up late round a farmer or a professor
who was talking about some subject that interested them.
The originator of these gatherings, Mr. Yamasaki, told me
that he was " more than once moved to tears by the merits
and pure hearts of the farmer speakers."

Of the regard and respect which the farmers had for this
man I had many indications. Like not a few agricultm-al
authorities, he is a samurai. * He is exceptionally tall for
a Japanese, looks indeed rather like a Highland gilUe, and
when one evening I prevailed on him to put on armoiu",
thrust two swords in his obi and take a long bow in his hand,
he was an imposing figure. He carries the ideals of bushido
into his rural work. He does not sleep more than five
hours, and he is up every morning at five.

But I am getting away from the meeting. There was a
priest who spoke, a man curiously like Tolstoy. (He had,
no doubt, Ainu blood in him.) He wore the stiff buttoned-
up jacket of the primary school teacher and spoke
modestly. " Formerly the rice fields of my village suffered
very much from bad irrigation," he said, " but when that
was put right the soil became excellent. In the days when
the soil was bad the people were good and no man suspected
another of stealing his seal. ^ But when the soil became good
the disposition of the people was influenced in a bad way,
and they brought their seals to the temple to be kept safe.

" At that time the organiser of this meeting came and
made a speech in my village. On hearing his speech I
thought it an easy task to make my village good. At once

' Samurai or shizoku comprise about a twentieth of the population.
2 Every Japanese signs by means of a stone or hard-wood seal which he
keeps in a case and ordinarily carries with him.

26 « THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH "

I began to do good things. I formed several men's and
women's associations, all at once, as if I were Buddha.
But the real condition of the people was not much improved.
There came many troubles upon me, and our friend wrote
a letter. I was very thankful, and I have been keeping
that letter in the temple and bowing there morning and
evening.

" I began to ask many distinguished persons to help me.
They influenced the farmers. The sight of a good man is
enough. Speech is imnecessary. The villagers were not
educated enough to understand moraUsings or thinking,
but the kind face of a good man has efficacy. There was
a man in the village who was demoralised, and when I told
of him to a distinguished man who lives near our village
he sympathised very much. That distinguished man is
eighty-four years old, but he accompanied that demoraUsed
man for three days, giving no instruction but simply hving
the same life, and the demoralised man was an entirely
changed man and ever thankful.

" I am a sinful man. Sometimes it happens that after
I have been working for the public benefit I am glad that
I am offered thanks. I know it is not a good thing when
people express gratitude to me, for I ought not to accept it.
When I know I am doing a good thing and expecting
thanks, I am not doing a good thing. My thanks must
not come from men but from Buddha. I am trying to
cast out my sinful feelings. It must not be supposed that
I am leading these people. You skilful farmers kindly
come to my village if you pass. You need not give any
speech. Your good faces will do."

But the two speeches I have reported are hardly a fair
sample of the discourses which were delivered. The
addresses of the earnest Tokyo officials and the Governor
were directed towards urging on the farmers increased
production and increased labour, and the duty was pressed
upon them, as I understood, in the name of the highest
patriotism and of devotion to their ancestors. This talk
was excellent in its way, but when I got up I hazarded a
few words on different lines. If I ventiwe to summarise
my somewhat elementary address it is because it furnishes

THE HIGHEST AIM 27

a key to some of the enquiries I was to make during my
journeys. I was told the next day that the local daily
had declared that my " tongue was tipped with fire,"
which was a compliment to my kind and clever interpreter,
who, when he let himself go, seemed to be able to make
two or three sentences out of every one of mine :

I said that my Japanese friends kept asking me my
impressions, and one thing I had to say to them was that
I had got an impression in many quarters of spiritual dry-
ness. I dared to think that some responsibility for a
materialistic outlook must be shared by the admirable
officials and experts who moved about among the farmers.
They were always talking about crop yields and the amount
of money made, and they unconsciously pressed home the
idea that rural progress was a material thing.

But the rural problem was not only a problem of better
crops and of greater production. Man did not live by
food alone. Tolstoy wrote a book called What Men Live
By, and there was nothing in it about food. Men lived
not by the number of bales of rice they raised, but by the
development of their minds and hearts. It might be asked
if it was not the business of rural experts to teach agricul-
ture. But a poet of my coimtry had said that it took
a soul to move a pig into a cleaner sty. It was necessary
for a man who was to teach agriculture well to know
something higher than agricidture. The teacher must be
more advanced than his pupils. There must be a source
from which the energy of the rural teacher must be again
and again renewed. There must be a well from which he
must be continually refreshed and stimulated. Some
called that well by the name of religion, unity with God.
Some called it faith in mankind, faith in the destiny .of the
world, that faith in man which is faith in God. But it
must be a real belief, not a half-hearted, shivering faith.

Agriculture was not only the oldest and the most ser-
viceable calling, it was the foundation of everything. But
the fact must not be lost sight of that agriculture, important
and vital though it was, was only a means to an end. The
object in view was to have in the rural districts better
men, women and children. The highest aim of rural
progress was to develop the minds and hearts of the rural
population, and in all discussion of the rural problems

28 " THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH "

it was necessary not to lose in technology a clear view of
the final object.

But when account is taken of all the drab materialism
in the rural districts there remains a leaven of imworldli-
ness. It takes various forms. Here is the story of a
landlord at whose beautiful house I stayed. " When a
tenant brings his rent rice to this landlord's storehouse,"
a fellow-guest told me, " it is never examined. The door
of the storehouse is left unpadlocked, and the rent rice is
brought by the tenant when he is minded to do so. No
one takes note of his coming. If he meets his landlord
on the road he may say, ' I brought you the rent,' and
the landlord says, ' It is very kind of you.' It is an old
custom not to supervise the tenants' bringing of the rent.

" Nowadays, however, some tenants are sly. They say,
' Our landlord never looks into our payments. Therefore
we can bring him inferior rice or less than the quantity.'
The landlord loses somewhat by this, but it is not in accord-
ance with the honour of his family to change the method
of collecting his rent. He is now chairman of the village
co-operative society as well as of the young men's society,
and he aims to improve his village fundamentally."

I also heard this narrative. The tenants in a certain
place wished to cultivate rice land rather than to farm
dry land. But when silkworm cultivation became pros-
perous they began to prefer dry land again in order that
they might extend the area of mulberries. Therefore the
landlords raised the rents of the dry farms. But there was
one landlord who said, " If this dry farm land had been
improved by me I should be justified in raising the rent.
But I did not improve it. Therefore it would be base to
take advantage of economic conditions to raise the rent."

So he did not raise the rent. Then he was excluded from
social intercourse by the other landlords because their
tenants grumbled. These landlords said to him, "You can
afford not to raise your rents, but we cannot." Therefore
the landlord who had not raised his rents called his tenants
together. He said to them, " It is a hard thing for me to
have no social intercourse with my equals. Therefore I
will now raise the rents. But I cannot accept that raised

PHILANTHROPIC WILES 29

portion, and I will take care of it for you, and in ten years
I think it will amount to enough for you to start a co-
operative society."

That was eight years ago and the formation of the society
was now proceeding. In order that the reader may not
forget on what a very different scale landlordism exists
in Japan, I may mention that the area owned by this land-
lord was only 10 cho.

I was told the story of a landlord's solution of the rent
reduction problem. " Tenants," the narrator said, " some-
times pretend that their crops are poorer than they are.
Landlords may reduce the payment due, but sometimes
with a certain resentment. One landowner was asked for
a reduction for several years in succession on account of
poor crops, and gave it. But he was trying to think of a
plan to defeat the pretences of his tenants. At last he hit
on one. While the tenants' rice was young he often visited
the fields, and when any insects were to be seen he sent
his labourers secretly to destroy them. In the same way,
when crops seemed to be imder-manured, he secretly
cast artificial manure on them. At last his tenants found
out what he was doing, and they said, ' As our landlord
is so kind to us, we must not pretend that we need a reduc-
tion.' And they did not, and things are going on very
well there. This is an illustration of the fact that our
people are moved more by feeling than by logic."
' This was capped by another story. " A landlord, a
samurai, has for his tenants his former subjects, so some-
thing of the relation of master and servant still remains.
He wished to raise his tenants to the position of peasant
proprietors, so when land was for sale in the village he
advised them to buy. They said they had no money, but
he answered, ' Means may perhaps be found.' He secretly
subscribed a sum to the Shinto shrine and then advised
the formation of a co-operative society, which could borrow
from the shrine for a tenant, so that the tenant need not
go to the landlord to thank him and feel patronised by
him. He need only to go to the shrine and give thanks
there." "The landlord," added the speaker in his
imperfect English, " has entirely hided himself from the

30 " THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH "

business." A third of the tenants had become peasant
proprietors.

In order to better the feeling between the farmers and
landowners this landlord and several others had begun to
ask their tenants to their gardens, where they were given
tea and fruit. " In Japan," said one man to me, " we
see feudal ideas broken down by the upper, not the lower
class."

I visited the romantic coast of a peninsula a dozen miles
from the railway. Some 10,000 pilgrims come in a year
to the eighty-eight temples on the peninsula, and in some
parts the people are such strict Buddhists that in one village
the county authorities find great difficulty in overcoming
an objection to destroying the insect life which preys
on the rice crops. When rice land does not jdeld well,
one landlord causes an investigation to be made and gives
advice based upon it to the tenant, saying, " Do this,
and if you lose I will compensate you. If you gain, the
advantage will be yours." Money is also contributed by
the landlord to enable tenants to make journeys in order
to study farming methods.

A landlord here — I had the pleasure of being his guest —
had started an agricultural association. It had developed
the idea of a secondary school for practical instruction,
" rich men to give their money and poor men their labour."
In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to get money
with which to set up as peasant proprietors, this landlord
had thought of the plan of setting aside each harvest 250
sho ' of rice to each tenant's 3 sho.

Good work was done in teaching farmers' wives. " When
no instruction is given," I was informed, " a wife may say,
when her husband is testing his rice seed with salt water,
' Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not fresh water ? '
If a husband is kind he will explain. If not, some implea-
sant^iess may arise, so wives are taught about the necessity
of selecting by salt water."

Tenants are advised to save a farthing a day. In order
to keep them steadfast in their thriftiness they are asked
to bring their savings to their landlord every ten days.

' A ah6 is about a quart and a half.

ME. TAMASAKI, DB. NITOBB, Tllli AUIHOE AiJD PEOFE330B NASTJ. p. xv

THE HOME IN WHICH THE TEA OBEEJIONT TOOK PIAOE. p. 31

[81

A GRACIOUS HOSPITALITY 31

It is troublesome to be constantly receiving so many small
sums, but the landlord and his brother think that they
should not grudge the trouble. In two years nearly
1,000 yen have been saved. Said one tenant to his land-
lord, " I know how to save now, therefore I save."

One of my hosts, who was thirty-two, hoped to see all
his tenants peasant proprietors before he was fifty. The
relation of this landlord and his tenants was illustrated
by the fact that on my arrival several farmers brought
produce to the kitchen " because we heard that the landlord
had guests." The village was very kind in its reception
of the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in the temple.
I told the story of Wren's Si monumentum requiris cir-
cumspice and pointed a rural moral. Some months after-
wards I received a request from my host to write a word
or two of preface to go with a report of my address which
he was giving to each of his tenants as a New Year gift.

This landlord's family had lived in the same house for
eleven generations. The courtesy of my host and his
relatives and the beauty of their old house and its contents
are an ineffaceable memory. From the time my party
arrived imtil the time we left no servant was allowed to
do anything for us. The ladies of the house cooked our
food and the landlord and his younger brother brought it
to us. The younger brother waited upon us throughout
our meals, even peeling our pears. At night he spread our
silk-covered futon (mattresses). In the morning he folded
them up, arranged my clothes, swept the room and stood
at hand with towels, all of which were new, while I washed.

When on our arrival in the house we sat and talked in the
first reception-room we entered, I noticed that outside the
lattice a company of villagers was listening with no con-
sciousness of intrusion, in full view of our host, to the sound
of foreign speech. It was a Shakespearean scene.

Out of its setting, as it is often witnessed to-day, the
tea ceremony seems meaningless and wearisome, an affected
simplicity of the idle. But as a guest of this old house of
fine timbers weathered to silver-grey I foimd the secret
of Cha-no-yu. This flower of Far Eastern civilisation is
an aesthetic expression of true good-fellowship, and a gentle

32 " THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH "

simplicity and sincerity are of its essence. The admission
of a foreigner to a family Cha-no-yu was a gesture of
confidence.

Five of us gathered late in the afternoon of an August
day in the cool matted rest-room ia the garden. We looked
on the beauty that generations of gardeners of a single
vision had created. Our minds rested in the quiet as, in
the quaint phrase, we " tasted the sound of the kettle
and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we
rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's
aunt, a slight figure in grey with snow-white ta^i and new
straw sandals, we passed by the dripping rocky fountain,
with its lilies, and the azure hydrangea of the hills which,
some say, suggests distance. The hut-like tea-room, tra-
ditionally rude in the material of which it was built but
perfect in every detail of its workmanship, we entered
one by one. According to old custom we humbly crept
through the small opening which serves as entrance, the
idea being that all worldly rank must bow at the sanc-
tuary of beauty. The tiny chamber held, besides the won-
derful vessels of the ceremony, a flower arrangement of blue
Michaelmas daisies, and an exquisite scroll of wild duck
in flight in the miniature tokonoma,^ the tea mistress,
our host and four guests. We drank from a black daimyo
bowl which had been made four hundred years before.
We passed an hour together and in the twilight we came
out from the little room as from a sacrament of friendship.
A year afterwards my host wrote to me, " Yesterday we
had Cha-no-yu again and you were in our thoughts. During
the ceremony we placed your photograph in the tokonoma."

After dinner we had kyogen ' by distinguished amateurs,
one of whom, a neighbouring landowner, had lately appeared
before the Emperor. After the plays he painted kyogen
scenes for us on kakemono and fans. He painted the
kakemono as he knelt with his paper lying on a square
of soft material on the floor.

The plays were performed in ancient costumes or copies

1 The raiaed recess in which is usually displayed the flower arrangement,
a piece of pottery and a kakemono. (See Note, page 35.)
' Farcical interludes of the No stage.

THE PLAYERS' TALES 33

of old ones and of course without scenery. The players
were lighted by oily candles two inches in diameter, which
flamed and guttered in candlesticks not of this century
nor of the last. A player may make his exit merely by
sitting down. The players are men ; masks are used in
playing women's parts. The stories are of the simplest.
There was the well-known tale of the sly servant who was
sent to town by a stupid daimyo in order to buy a fan, and,
though he brought back an umbrella, succeeded in imposing
it on his master. There was also the play of the fox who
comes to a farmer to advise him not to kill foxes, but is
himself caught in a trap. I also recall a story of two good
tenants who had been rewarded by their landlord with an
order that they should receive hats. Owing to an oversight
they received one hat only between the two. Problem,
how to meet the difficulty. It was solved by the rustics
fastening two pieces of wood together T-shape, raising
the hat of honour upon the structure and walking home
in triumph under either side of the T.

The next morning I was greeted by the aged father and
mother of our host. The household was an interesting
one, for the landlord and his brother were married to two
sisters. Before taking our departure we knelt with our
landlord and his father before the Buddhist shrine on
which rested the memorial tablets of former heads of the
house. I expressed my sense of the privilege extended
to strangers. The reply was, " Our ancestors will feel
pleasure in your being among us."

CHAPTER V

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE
The sense of a common humanity is a real political force. — J. R. Gbben

The stranger in Japan sees so little of the intimacies of
country life that I shall say something of further visits to
what we should call county families. My hosts, who
seemed to be active to a greater or less degree in promoting
the welfare of their tenants, lived in purely Japanese style.
Yet now and then in a beautiful house there was a showy
gilt timepiece or some other thing of a deplorable Western
fashion. At all the houses without exception we were
waited upon by the host and his son, son-in-law or brother,
and for some time after our arrival our host and the mem-
bers of his family would kneel, not in the apartment in which
our zabuton (kneeling cushions) were arranged, but in the
adjoining apartment with its screens pushed back. Even
when the time of sweets and tea had passed and a regular
meal was served, all the little tables of food were brought
in not by servants but by the master of the house and such
male relatives as were at home.

When the duration of a Japanese meal is borne in mind,
some idea may be gained of the fatigue endured by the head
of a house in serving many guests. The host sometimes
honours his guests still further by eating apart from them
or by partaking of a portion only of the meal. The name
of a feast in Japanese is significant, " a ruiming about."
The ladies of the house are usually seen for only a few
minutes, when they come with the children to welcome the
guests on their arrival ; but on the second day of the visit
the ladies may bring in food or tea or play the koto.

The foreigner, though on his knees, feels a little at a loss
to know how to acknowledge politely the repeated bows of

FAMILY TREASURES 35

so many kneeling men and women. He watches with
appreciation the perfect response of his Japanese traveUing
companions. It is difficult to convey a sense of the charm
and dignity of old courtesies exchanged with sincerity be-
tween well-bred people in a fine old house. Although all
the shoji ' are open, the trees of the beautiful garden cast a
pensive shade. The ancient ceremonial of welcome and
introduction would seem ludicrous in the full hght of a
Western drawing-room, but in the perfectly subdued light
of these romantically beautiful apartments, charged with
some strange and melancholy emotion, the visitor from the
West feels himself entering upon the rare experience of a
new world.

Everyone knows how few are the treasures that a Japan-
ese displays in his house. His heirlooms and works of art
are stored in a fireproof annexe. For the feasting of the
eye of every guest or party of visitors the appropriate
choice of kakemono,' carving or pottery is made. I had
the delight of seeing during my country-house visiting many
ancient pictures of country life and of animals and birds.
It was also a precious opportunity to inspect armour and
wonderful swords and stands of arrows in the houses in
)vhich the men who had worn the armour and used the
weapons had lived. The way of stringing the seven-feet-
high bow was shown to me by a kimono-clad samurai, as
has been recorded in the previous chapter. When he
threw himself into a warlike attitude and with an ancient
cry whirled a gleaming two-handed sword in the dim light
thrown by lanterns which had lighted the house in the
time of the Shoguns, the figures on old-time Japanese
prints had a new vividness.

' Shoji are the screens which divide a room from the outside. They are
a dainty wooden framework of many divisions, each of which is covered
by a sheet of thin white paper. The shoji provide light and are never
painted. The sliding doors between two rooms are karahami {fusuma is
a literary word). They are a wooden framework with thick paper or cloth
on both sides of it and with paper packing between the layers. Kara-
hami are often decorated with writing or may be painted. No light
passes through them.

2 A writing or a picture on a long perpendicular strip of paper or silk
or of paper mounted on silk, with rollers. The length is about three times
the width, which is usually 1 ft. 3 in. or 1 ft. 10 in. The Uahemono in the
tokomnna of tea-ceremony rooms is about 10 in. wide.

36 COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

What also helped in illuminating for me the old prints of
warlike scenes was a display of a remarkable kind of fencing
with naked weapons which one of my hosts kindly provided
in his garden one evening. The tournament was conducted
by the village young men's association. The exercises,
which, as I saw them, are peculiar to the district, are called
ki-ai, which means literally " spirit meeting." They call
not only for long training but for courage and ardour. The
combats took place on a small patch of grass which was
fenced by four bamboo branches. These were connected
by a rope of paper streamers such as are used to distinguish
a consecrated place. Before the first bout the bamboos
and rope were taken away and a handful of salt was thrown
on the grass. Salt was similarly thrown on the grass before
every contest. The idea is that salt is a purifier. It signi-
fies, like the handshake of our boxers, that the feeUngs of
the combatants are cleansed from malice.

Most of the events were single combats, but there were
two meetings in which a man confronted a couple of assail-
ants. The contests I recall were spear v. spear, spear v.
sword, sword v. long billhook, spear v. the short Japanese
sickle and a chain, spear v. paper umbreUa and sword,
pole V. wooden sword, pole v. pole, and long billhook v. fan
and sword. The weapons were sharp enough to inflict
serious wounds if a false move should be made or there should
be a momentary lack of self-control. The flashing steel gave
an impression of imminent danger. There was also the
feehng aroused in the spectators by the way in which the
combatants sought to gain advantage over one another by
fierce snarls, stamping on the ground and appaUing gestures.
The neck veins of the fighters swelled and their faces
flamed with mock defiance. Their agility in escaping de-
scending blades was amazing. But the ki-ai player's
dexterity is famous. It is his boast that with his sword he
could cut a straw on a friend's head. I noticed that no
women were present at the " spirit meeting."

More than once I found that my landlord host was
accustomed to make a circuit of his village once or twice a
week in order to see how things were going with his tenants.
Public-spirited landlords were working for their people by

"WE CHECK OURSELVES" 37

means of co-operation, lectures and prizes, the distribution
of leaflets and the giving of from 2| to 7| per cent, discount
in rent when good rice was produced. The rural phil-
anthropist in Japan sees himself as the father of his village.'
The Japanese word for landlord is " land master " and for
tenant " son tiller." The old idea was patronage on the
one side and respect on the other. This idea is dis-
kppearing. " We wish," said one landlord to me, " to pass
through the transition stage gradually. We do not feel
the same responsibility to our people, perhaps, now that
they do not show the same reverence for us, but we do not
say to them that they may go to the factory and we will
invest our money for our children. We check ourselves.
We know well, however, that things will change in our
grandsons' time. We therefore try to mix our grandfathers'
ideas and modern ideas. We are believers in co-opera-
tion and we try to be counsellors and to work behind the
curtain."

From time to time there are such things as tenants'
strikes. Mr. Yamasaki assured me that the problem of the
rural districts can be solved only by appeahng to the feel-
ings of the people in the right way. He said that " the
Japanese are largely moved by feelings, not by convictions."
In some coastwise counties, someone told me, a hurricane
destroyed the crops to such an extent that the tenants could
not pay rent, and the landlords who depended on their
rents were impoverished. Things reached such a pass that
a hundred thousand peasants signed a paper swearing
fidehty to an anti-landlord propaganda. Officials and
lawyers achieved nothing. Then Mr. Yamasaki went,
and, sitting in the local temple, talked things over with
both sides for days. He got the landlords to say that they
were sorry for their tenants and the tenants to say that
they were sorry for the landlords, and eventually he was
allowed to burn the oath-attested document in the temple.'

Many landlords are " endeavouring to cultivate a moral
relation" between themselves and their tenants. They

* For budgets of large property owners, see Appendix III.
2 There have been several serious tenants' demonstrations in Aichi
during 1921.. See Chapter XIX.

38 COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

have often the advantage that their ancestors were the
landlords of the same peasant families for many genera-
tions. But there are still plenty of absentee landlords and
landlords who are usurers. There are also the landlords
who have let their lands to middlemen. The cultivator
therefore pays out of all proportion to what the landlord
receives. Of landlords generally, an ex-daimyo's son said
to me : " Many landlords treat their tenants cruelly. The
rent enforced is too high. In place of the intimate relations
of former days the relations are now that of cat and dog.
The ignorance of the landlords is the cause of this state of
things. It is very important that the landlord's son shall
go to the agricultural school, where there is plenty of
practical work which will bring the perspiration from him."
The object of most good landlords is to increase the
income of their tenants. It is felt that unless the farmers
have more money in their hands, progress is impossible.
There is one direction in which the landlords are not tried.
The franchise is so narrow that farmers cannot vote against
their landlords.

In the house of one old landowning family in which I was
a guest I saw a gaku inscribed, ' ' Happiness comes to the
house whose ancestors were virtuous." I was admitted
to the family shrine. Round the walls of the small apart-
ment in which the shrine stood were the autographs or
portraits of distinguished members of the house going back
four or five hundred years. It was easy to see that the
inspiring force of this family was its untarnished name. It
was a crime against the ancestors to reduce the prestige
or merit of the family. No stronger influence could be
exerted upon an erring member of such a family than to be
brought by his father or elder brother before the family
shrine and there reprimanded in the presence of the
ancestral spirits. The head of this house is at present a
schoolboy of twelve and the government of the family is in
the hands of a " regent," the lad's uncle. I saw the boy
and his younger sister trot off in the morning with their
satchels on their backs to the village school in democratic
Japanese fashion. Japan is a much more democratic
country than the tourist imagines. Distinctions of class

THE JAPANESE INTERIOR 39

are accompanied by easy relations in many important
matters.

I went for a second time to the restful city of Nagoya.
It is out of the sphere of influence of Tokyo and is con-
servative of old ideas. People live with less display than
in the capital and perhaps pride themselves on doing so.
But if the houses of even the well-to-do are small and
inconspicuous, the interiors are of satisfying quaUty in
materials and workmanship, and the family godowns bring
forth surprises. Here as elsewhere the guest is served in
treasured lacquer and porcelain. (While we are not accus-
tomed in the West to look at the marks on our host's table
silver, it is perfect Japanese manners to admire a food
bowl by examining the potter's marks.) My host hung a
rural kakemono in my room, one day a fine old study of
poultry, another an equally beautiful painting of holly-
hocks.

As we left the town my attention was attracted by a com-
memorative stone overlooking rice fields. The inscription
proclaimed the fact that at that spot the late Emperor
Meiji,' as a lad of fifteen, on his historic first journey to
Tokyo, " beheld the farmers reaping."

The matron of a farmhouse two centuries old showed me
a tub containing tiny carp which she had hatched for her
carp pond, the inmates of which, as is common, came to be
fed when she clapped her hands. In the garden there was
an old clay butt still used for archery. In the farmhouse
I was taken into a room in which in the old days the daimyo
overlord had rested, into another room which had a secret
door and into a third room where — an electric fan was
buzzing.

At a school I had to face the usual ordeal of having to
" write " as best I could a motto for use as a wall picture.
Our lettering, when done with a brush, falls pitifully be-
hind Chinese characters in decorative value, and our
mottoes will not readily translate into Japanese. I was

1 Each Emperor receives on his succession a name which is applied
to the period of his reign. The period of Mutsuhito'a reign, 1868-1912, is
called Meiji ; that of the present Emperor Taiaho. Thus the year 1912
would be Taigho 1.
5

40 COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

often grateful to Henley for " I am the master of my fate, I
am the captain of my soul," because with the substitution
of " commander " for captain, the lines translate literally.

We left the village through arches which had been erected
by the young men's association. At an old country house
four interesting things were shown to me. There was,
first, a phial of rice seed 280 years old. The agricultural
professor who was my fellow-guest told me that he had
germinated some of the grains, but they did not produce
rice plants. The second thing was a fine family shrine
before which a religious ceremony had been performed
twice a day by succeeding generations of the same family
for 350 years. The third object of interest was a little,
narrow, flat steel dagger about eight inches long, sheathed
in the scabbard of a sword. The dagger was used for
" fastening an enemy's head on." After the owner of the
sword had beheaded his foe, he drew the smaller weapon,
and, thrusting one end into the headless trunk and the other
end into the base of the head, politely united head and
body once more, thus making it possible " to show due
respect and sympathy towards the dead." Finally, I
had the privilege of handling a wonderful suit of armour
which was fitted slowly together for me out of many pieces.
Although it had been made several centuries ago, this rich
suit of lacquered leather had been a Japanese general's
wear on the field of battle within living memory.

One of the landowners I met was a poet who had been
successful in the Imperial poem competition which is held
every New Year. A subject is set by His Majesty and the
thousands of pieces sent in are submitted to a committee.
The dozen best productions are read before the sovereign
himself, and this is the honour sought by the competitors.
The subject for competition in the year in which the land-
owner had been successful was, " The cryptomeria in a
temple court." His poem was as follows :

In transplanting

The young cryptomeria trees

Within the sacred fence

There is a symbol

Of the beginning of the reign.

POWER OF PUBLIC OPINION 41

The New Year poems come from every class of the com-
mimity and there is seldom a year in which landowners or
farmers are not among the fortmiate twelve.

As we rode along a companion spoke of the force of public
opinion in keeping things straight in the countryside, also
of the far-reaching control exercised by fathers and elder
brothers. But the good behaviour of some people was due,
he said, to a dread of being ridiculed in the newspapers,
which allow themselves extraordinary freedom in dealing
with reputations.

I met a man who had had a monument erected to him. He
was a member of a little company which received me in a
farmer's house. He was formerly the richest man in the
village, that is to say, he owned 20 cho and was worth about
100,000 yen. Moved by the poverty of his neighbours,
he devoted his substance to improving their condition.
Now many of them are well off, the village has been
" praised and rewarded " by the prefecture for its " good
farming and good morals," and the philanthropist is worth
only 50,000 yen. Impressed by his unselfishness, the village
has raised a great slab of stone in his honour.

I made enquiries continually about the influence exerted
by priests. I was told of many " careless " priests, but
also of others who delivered sermons of a practical sort.
A few of the younger priests were described as " philo-
sophical " and some preached " the kingdom of God is
within you." Many people laid stress on the necessity for
a better education of the priesthood and for combating
superstition among the peasantry, though the schools had
already had a powerful influence in shaking the faith of
thousands of the common people in charms and suchlike.
Many folk put up charms because it was the custom or to
please their old parents or because it could do no harm.

I was told that the Government does not encourage the
erection of new temples. Its notion is that it is better to
maintain the existing temples adequately. When I
went to see a gorgeous new temple, I foimd that official
permission for its erection had been obtained because the
figures, vessels and some of the fittings of an old and
dilapidated temple were to be used in the new edifice. This

42 COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

temple was on a large tract of land which had recently
been recovered from the sea. The building had cost between
80,000 and 90,000 yen. It stood on piles on rising ground
and had a secondary purpose in that it offered a place of
refuge to the settlers on the new land if the sea dike should
break.

The founder of the temple was the man who had
drained the land and established the colony. He had
given an endowment of 500 yen a year, three-quarters
of which was for the priest. This functionary had
also an income of 150 yen from a cho of land attached to
the temple. Further he received gifts of rice and vege-
tables. I noticed that the gifts of rice — acknowledged on a
list himg up in his house — varied in quantity from four
pecks to half a cupful. Probably the priest bought very
little of anything. If he needed matting for his house, which
was attached to the temple, or if he had to make a journey,
the villagers saw that his requirements were met. And
he was always getting presents of one kind or another.
" A man says to the priest," I was told, " ' This is too good
for me ; please accept it.' " The villagers on their side
sat and smoked in one of the temple rooms and drank
his reverence's tea for hours before and after service.'

The building of the temple was not only an act of piety
but a work of commercial necessity. The colonists on the
reclaimed land would never have settled there if there
had not been a temple to hold them to the place and to
provide burial rites for their old parents. Not all the
people were of the same sect of Buddhism, but " they
gradually came together." A third of what a tenant
produced went for rent and another third for fertilisers,
the remaining third being his own. The population was
1,800 in 300 families. The average area per family was
2 cho and colonists were expected to start with about
200 yen of capital. Some impromising tenants had been
sent away and "some had left secretly." Half of the
people were in debt to the landlord — the total indebtedness

1 It will be remembered that there is only one prefecture in which tea
is not grown in larger or smaller areas, and that it is served economically
without sugar or milk

THE COMING OF THE EMPEROR 48

was about 15,000 yen— for the erection of houses and the
purchase of implements and stock. The rate was 8 per
cent. In the district 10 per cent, was quite usual and 12
per cent, by no means rare. The co-operative society
lent at the daily rate of 2j sen per 100 yen.

The landlord told me that the sea dikes took two years
to build and that most of the earth was carried by women,
5,000 of them. Their labour was cheap and the small
quantities of earth which each woman brought at a time
permitted of a better consolidation of an embankment
that was 240 feet wide at the base. More than a million
yen were laid out on the work. The reclaimed land was
free of State taxes for half a century, but the landlord made
a voluntary gift to the village of 2,000 yen a year. The
yearly rent coming in was already nearly 56,000 yen. The
cost of the management of the drained land and of repairs
to the embankment, 20,000 yen a year, was just met by
the profits of a fishpond. A valuable edible seaweed
industry was carried on outside the sea dikes. The land-
lord mentioned that he had had great difficulty in over-
coming the objections of his grandfather to the investment,
but that eventually the old man got so much interested
that at ninety-three he used to march about giving orders.
One day in the course of my journeying I was near a
railway station where country people had assembled to
watch the passing of a train by which the Emperor was
travelling. No one was permitted along the line except
at specified points which were carefuUy watched. A
yoimg constable who wore a Russian war medal was
opposite the spot where I stood. He politely asked me to
keep one shaku (foot) or so away from the paling. When
someone's child pushed itself half-way through the paling the
police instruction was, " Please keep back the little one for,
if it should pass through, other children will no doubt wish
to follow." A later request by the constable was to take
off our hats and keep silence when he raised his hand
on the approach of the Imperial train. We were further
asked not to point at the Emperor and on no accoimt to
cry Banzai. (The Japanese shout Banzai for the Emperor
in his absence and cry Banzai to victorious generals and

44 COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

admirals, but perfect silence is considered the most re-
spectful way of greeting the Emperor himself.) The
Imperial train, which was preceded by a pilot engine
drawing a van full of rather anxious-looking police, slowed
down on approaching the station so that everyone had a
chance of seeing the Emperor, who was facing us. All
the school children of the district had been marshalled
where they could get a good view. The Japanese bow of
greatest respect — it has been introduced since the Restora-
tion, I was told — is an inclination of the head so slight that
it does not prevent the person who bows seeing his superior.
This bow when made by rows of people is impressive.
Undoubtedly the crowd was moved by the sight of its
sovereign. Not a few people held their hands together in
front of them in an attitude of devotion. The day before
I had happened to see first a priest and then a professor
examining a magazine which had a portrait of the Emperor
as frontispiece. Both bowed slightly to the print. Coloured
portraits of the Emperor and Empress are on sale in the
shops, but in many cases there is a little square of tissue
paper over the Imperial coimtenances.

CHAPTER VI

BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI '

Nor do I see why we should take it for granted that their gods are
unworthy of respect. — Valerius

In Aichi prefecture I was asked to plant trees (per-
simmons) in the grounds of three temples or shrines and on
the land of several farmers. In an exposed position
on a hill-top I found persimmons being grown on a system
under which the landlord provided the land, trees and
manures and the farmer the labour, and the produce was
equally divided.

The cryptomeria at one of the shrines I visited were of
great age. All of them had lost their tops by lightning.
It cannot be easy for those who have never seen cryptomeria
or the redwoods of California to realise the impression made
by dark giant trees that have stood before some shrine for
generations. At the approach to the shrine of which I
speak there were venerable wooden statues. I recall one
figure carved in wood as full of life as that of the famous
Egyptian headman.

The aged chief priest, who was assisted by two younger
priests, kindly invited me to take part in a Shinto service.
First, I ceremonially washed my hands and rinsed my
mouth. Then, having ascended the steps, my shoes were
removed for me so that my hands should not be defiled.
On entering the serine I knelt opposite the young priests,
one of whom brought me the usual evergreen bough with
paper streamers. On receiving it I rose to my feet, passed
through the beautiful building and advanced to what I may
call, for the lack of a more accurate term, the altar table.
On this table, which, as is usual in Shinto ceremonies, was
of new white wood following the ancient design, I laid the

> Son-God-of-the-Spirit-of-the-Province,
4§

46 BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI

offering. Then I bowed and gave the customary three
smart hand-claps which summon the attention of the
deity of the shrine, and bowed again. On returning to my
former kneehng- place one of the priests offered me sakd and
a small piece of dried fish in paper.* The chief priest was
good enough to read and to hand to me an address headed,
" Words of Congratulation to the Investigator," which may
be Englished as follows :

" I, Yukimichi Otsu, the chief priest, speak most respect-
fully and reverently before the shrine of the august deity,
Okunitama-no-miko-no-kami, and other deities here en-
shrined : Dr. Robertson Scott, of England, is here this
good day. He comes to see the things of Japan under the
governance of our gracious Emperor. I, having made
myself quite pure and clean, open the door of gracious eyes
that they may look upon those who are here. May Dr.
Robertson Scott be protected during night and day, no
accident happening wherever he may go. Dr. Robertson
Scott goes everywhere in this country ; he may cross a
hundred rivers and pass over many hills. May there
be no foundering of his boat, no stumbling of his horse.
Offering produce of land and sea, I say this most respectfully
before the shrine."

After the shrine I visited a co-operative store, curiously
reminiscent of many a similar rural enterprise I had seen
in Denmark. Sugar, coarser than anjiihing sold at home,
was dear. Half the price paid for sugar in Japan is tax.
I was informed that there were no fewer than 400 co-
operative organisations in the prefecture.

At several places, although the villagers were busy rice
planting, the young men's association turned out. The
young men were reinforced by reservists and came sharply
to attention as our kuruma {jinrikisha, usually pneumatic-
tyred) passed. Some of the villages we bowled through
were off the ordinary track, and the older villagers observed
the ancient custom of coming out from their houses or farm
plots, dropping on their knees and bowing low as we

1 It was a tiny squid. There are seventy sorts of cuttlefish and octo-
puses in Japanese waters. Value of dried cuttlefish in 1917, 4 million yen.

CHARMS 47

passed.' All over Japan, a villager encountered on the
road removed the towel from his head before bowing. If
a cloak or outer coat was worn, it was taken off or the motion
of taking it off was made. Frequently, in showery weather,
cyclists who were wearing mackintoshes or capes, alighted
and removed these outer garments before saluting.

I saw a village which a few years ago had been " disorderly
and poor " and in continual friction with its landlord.
Eventually this man realised his responsibility, and, in-
spired by Mr. Yamasaki, took the situation in hand. He
talked in a straightforward way with his villagers, reduced
a number of rents and spent money freely in ameliorative
work. To-day the village is " remarkable for its good con-
duct " and the relation between landlord and tenant seems
to be everything that can be desired. The landlord is not
only the moving spirit of the co-operative store but has
started a school for girls of from fifteen to twenty. They
bring their own food but the schooling is free.

On the gables of one or two houses near the roof I
noticed ventilators which were cut in the form of the
Chinese ideograph which means water, a kind of charm
against fire. At the door of one rather well-to-do peasant
house I saw several paper charms against toothache.
There was also an inscription intimating that the house-
holder was a director of the co-operative society and
another announcing that he was an expert in the applica-
tion of the moxa.' Every house I went into had a collec-
tion of charms. One charm, a verse of poetry hung
upside-down, as is the custom, was against ants. Another
was understood to ensure the safe return of a straying cat.
In one house in the village my attention was drawn to
the fact that the rice pot contained a large percentage of
barley.

In two or three places I passed pits for the excavation
of lignite, which does not look unlike the wood taken out
of bogs. A pit I stopped at was twenty-two fathoms deep.
There were twenty miners at work and air was being
pumped down.

' The hands are laid flat on the ground with finger-tips meeting and
the forehead touches the hands.
' See Chapter XX.

48 BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI

One of the things we in the West might imitate with
advantage is the village crematorium. In Japan it is of
the simplest construction. The rate for villagers was 50
sen, that for outsiders 2 yen. No doubt there would be an
additional yen for the priest. In a little building which was
thirty years old 200 bodies had been cremated.

I looked into a small co-operative rice storehouse. The
building was provided by a number of members " swearing "
to save at the rate of a yen and a half a month each until the
funds needed had accumulated. The money was obtained
by extra labour in the evening. Just before I left Japan
the Department of Agriculture was arranging to spend
2 million yen within a ten-years' period to encourage the
building of 4,000 rice storehouses.

As I watched the water pouring from one rice field to
another and wondered how the rights of landowners were
ever reconciled, someone reminded me of the phrase, " water
splashing quarrels," that is disputes in which each side
blames the other without getting any farther forward.
To take an unfair advantage in controversy is to
draw water into one's own paddy. The equivalent for
" pouring water on a duck's back" is " flinging water in a
frog's face." A Western European is always astonished
in Japan by the lung power of Far Eastern frogs. The
noise is not unlike the bleating of lambs.

Every now and again one comes on a fragrant bed of
lotus in its paddy field. It seems odd at first that lotus —
and burdock — should be cultivated for food. As a pickle
burdock is eatable, but lotus and some unfamiliar tuberous
plants are pleasant food resembling in flavour boiled chest-
nuts. Konnyaku (hydrosme rivieri), a near relative of the
arum lily, is produced to the weight of 11 million kwan — a
kwan is roughly 8 J lbs.' The yield of burdock is about 44
million kwan. The chief of all vegetables is the giant
radish, of which 7i million kwan are grown. Taro yields
about 150 million kwan. Foreigners usually like the young
sprouts taken from the roots of the bamboo, a favourite
Japanese vegetable.

1 The root grows to about the size of a big apple. It may be seen
in the shops in white dried seotions. A stifi greyish jelly made from
it is eaten with rice. It ia also eaten as oden or dengaktt.

UTILISATION OF WASTE 49

This is as convenient a place as any to speak of an
important agricultural fact, the enormous amount of filth
worked into the paddies. As is well known, hardly any of the
night soil of Japan is wasted. Japanese agriculture depends
upon it. Formerly the night soil was removed from the
houses after being emptied into a pair of tubs which the
peasant carried from a yoke. Such yoke-carried tubs are
still seen, but are chiefly employed in carrjdng the sub-
stance to the paddies. The tubs which are taken to dwellings
are now mostly borne on light two-wheeled handcarts which
carry sometimes four and sometimes six. A farmer will
push or pull his manure cart from a town ten or twelve
miles off. It is difficult to leave or enter a town without
meeting strings of manure carts. The men who haul the
carts get together for company on their tedious journey.
They peem insensible to the concentrated odour. Often
the wife or son or daughter may be seen pushing behind a
cart. There is a certain amount of transportation by horse-
drawn frame carts, carrying a dozen or sixteen tubs, and by
boats. I was told of a city of half a million inhabitants
which had thirty per cent, of its night soil taken ten miles
away. The work was undertaken by a co-operative society
which paid the municipality the large sum of 70,000 yen
a year. The removal of night soil, its storage in the fields
in sunken butts and concrete cisterns — carefully protected
by thatched, wooden or concrete roofs — and its constant
application to paddy fields or upland plots cause an odour
to prevail which the visitor to Japan never forgets.'

It must not be supposed that, because the Japanese are
careful to utilise human waste products, no other manure
is employed. There is an enormous consumption of
chemical fertilisers. Then there are brought into service
all sorts of crop-feeding materials, such as straw, grass,
compost, silkworm waste, fish waste, and of course the
manure produced by such stock as is kept.' In Aichi the
value of human waste products used on the land is only a
quarter of the value of the bean cake and fish waste
similarly employed.

At Mr. Yamasaki's excellent agricultural school (prefec-

> See Appendix IV. * See Appendix XX.

50 BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI

tural), which I visited more than once,' I was struck by the
grave bearing of the students. I saw them not only in
their classrooms but in their large hall, where I was invited
to speak from a platform between the busts of two rural
worthies, Ninomiya, of whom we have heard before, and
another who was " distinguished by the righteousness of
his public career." As in the Danish rural high schools,
store is set on hard physical exercise. An hour of exercise
— judo (jujitsu), sword play or military drill — is taken
from six to seven in the morning and another at mid-
day with the object of " strengthening the spirit " and
" developing the character," for " our farmers must not
only be honest and determined but courageous." Severe
physical labour, shared by the teacher, is also given out of
doors, for example, in heaping manure. " We believe,"
said one of the instructors, " in moral virtue taught by
the hands."

For an hour a day " the main points of moral virtue "
are put before the different grades of students, according
to their ages and development. The school has a guild to
which the twenty teachers and all the students belong.
It is a kind of co-operative society for the " purchase and
distribution of daily necessities," but one of its objects is
" the maintenance of public morality." Then there is the
students' association which has Uterary and gymnastic
sides, the one side " to refine wisdom and virtue," the other
" for the rousing of spirit." Mention may also be made
of a " discipline calendar " of fixed memorial days and
ceremonies " that all the students should observe " : the
ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education,
thrift and moraUty, and the ceremonies at the end of rice
planting, at harvest and at the maturity of the silk- worm.

The fitting-up of the school is Spartan but the rooms are
high and well lighted and ventilated. The students' hot
bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies
are also the dormitories, and in the comer of each there is
stored a big mosquito netting. Except for a few square
yards near the doors, these rooms consist of the usual
raised platform covered with the national tatami or matting.

1 See Appendix V.

THE OLD MAN AND THE OFFICIALS 51

I heard a characteristic story of the Director. During
the Russo-Japanese war everybody was economising, and
many people who had been in the habit of riding in kuruma
began to walk. Our agricultural celebrity had always had a
passion for walking, so it was out of his power to economise
in kuruma. What he did was to cease walking and take to
kuruma riding, for, he said, " in war time one must work
one's utmost, and if I move about quickly I can get more
done."

I may add a story which this rare man himself told me.
I had seen in his house a photograph of a memorial slab
celebrating the heroic death of a peasant. It appeared that
in a period of scarcity there was left in this peasant's
village only one imbroken bale of rice. This rice was in the
possession of the peasant, who was suffering from lack of
food. But he would not cook any of the rice because he
knew that if he did the village would be without seed in
spring. Eventually the brave man was foimd dead of
hunger in his cottage. His pillow had been the unopened
bale of rice.

In the house of a small peasant proprietor I visited the
inscriptions on the two gaku signified " Buddha's teaching
broken by a beautiful face " and " Cast your eyes on high."
On the wall there was also a copy of a resolution concerning
a recent Imperial Rescript which 500 rural householders,
at a meeting in the county, had " sworn to observe,"
and, as I imderstood, to read two or three times a
year.

Japan, as I have already noted, has always been a more
democratic coimtry than is generally imderstood ; but the
people have been accustomed to act imder leaders. Some
time ago an ofl&cial of the Department of Agriculture
visited a certain district in order to speak at the local
temple in advocacy of the adjustment of rice fields. (See
Chapter VIII.) A dignitary corresponding to the chairman
of an English coimty council was at the temple to receive
the official, but at the time appointed for the meeting to
begin the audience consisted of one old man. Although the
ofiicial from Tokyo and the guncho (head of a county)
waited for some time, no one else put La an appearance. So

52 BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI

they asked the old man the reason. He replied by asking
them the object of the meeting. They told him. He said
that he had so understood and that the community had so
understood, but the farmers were very busy men. There-
fore, as he was the oldest man in the district, they had sent
him as their representative. Their instructions were that
he would be able to tell from his experience of the district
whether what the authorities proposed would be a good
thing for it or not. If he considered it to be a bad thing
they would not do it, but if he thought it to be a good thing
they would do it. He was to hear all that was said and then
to give a decision on the community's behalf to the officials
who might attend. " So," said the old man to the Tokyo
official and the guncho, " if you convince me you have con-
vinced the village." And after two hours' explanation
they convinced him !

There are in Japan hydraulic engineering works as
remarkable in their way as any I have seen in the Nether-
lands. Some of these works, for example the tunnels
for conducting rice-field water through considerable hills,
have been the work of imlettered peasants. In one place
I found that 80 miles or more of irrigation was based on a
canal made two centuries ago. It is good to see so many
embankings of refractory streams and excavations of
river beds commemorated by slabs recording the public
services of the men who, often at their own charges, carried
out these works of general utility.

In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders
who had reached a high degree of proficiency in the fine art
of dwarfing trees. One day I stopped to speak with a
farmer who by this art had added 1,000 yen a year to
his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old maple was
one of his triumphs. Another was a pomegranate about a
foot and a half high. It was in flower and would bear fruit
of ordinary size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as
is now well known, by cramping the roots in the pot and
by extremely skilful pruning, manuring and watering.
While we drank tea some choice specimens were dis-
played before a screen of unrelieved gold. In the room in
which we sat the farmer had arranged in a bowl of water

THE POLICEMAN 53

with great effectiveness hydrangea, a spray of pomegranate
and a cabbage.

One marks the respect shown to the rural policeman. In
his summer uniform of white cotton, with his flat white
cap and white gloves, and an imposing sword, he looks like
a naval officer, even if, as sometimes happens, his feet are
in zori. He gets respect because of his dignified presence
and sense of official duty, because of the considerable powers
which he is able to exercise, because he stands for the
Government, and because he is sometimes of a higher
social grade than that to which policemen belong in other
countries. At the Restoration many men of the samurai
class did not thiak it beneath them to enter the new sword-
wearing police force and they helped to give it a standing
which has been maintained. As to the policeman being a
representative of the Government, the ordinary Japanese
has a way of speaking of the Government doing this or that
as if the Government were irresistible power. Average
Japanese do not yet conceive the Government as something
which they have made and may unmake.' But is it likely
that they should, parliamentary history, the work of their
betters, being as short as it is ? It is not without sig-
nificance that the Chambers of the Diet are housed in
temporary wooden buildings.

The rural policeman is not only a paternal guardian of
the peace but an administrative official. He keeps an eye
on public health. He is charged with correctly main-
taining the record of names and addresses — and some other
particulars — of everybody in the village. It is his duty to
secure correct information as to the name, age, place of
origin and real business of every stranger. He attends all
public meetings, even of the young men's and young
women's associations, and no strolling players can give
their entertainment without his presence. As to the move-
ments of strangers, my own were obviously well known.
Indeed a friend told me that in the event of my losing
myself I had only to ask a policeman and he would be able
to tell me where I was expected next ! At the houses of
well-to-do people I was struck by the way in which the local

' The truth i« being learnt by the yoiinger generation.

64 BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMl

police oflBcer — sometimes, no doubt, a sergeant or perhaps
a man of the rank of our superintendent or chief constable —
called with the headman and joined our kneeling circle in
the reception-room. Nominally he came to pay his
respects, but his chief object, no doubt, was to take stock
of what was going on. I invariably took the opportunity
of closely interviewing him.

The extraordinary degree to which Japanese are com-
monly accustomed in their differences of opinion to refrain
from blows makes many of their quarrels harmless. The
threat to send for the policeman or the actual appearance
of the policeman has an almost magical effect in calming
a disturbance. The Japanese policeman believes very
much in reproving or reprimanding evil doers and in
reasoning with folk whose " carelessness " has attracted
attention. Sometimes for greater impressiveness the
admonitions or exhortations are delivered at the police
station.' In more than one village I heard a tribute paid
to the good influence exerted on a community by a devoted
policeman.

The chief of an agricultural experiment station also seems
to obtain a large measure of respect, to some extent, no
doubt, because he occupies a public office. The regard
felt for Mr. Yamasaki goes deeper. A few years ago he
was sent on a mission abroad and in his absence his local
admirers cast about for a way of showing their appreciation
of his work. They began by raising what was described
to me as " naturally not a large but an honourable sum."
With this money they decided to add three rooms to his
dwelling. They had noted how visitors were always coming
to his house in order to profit by his experience and advice.
Mr. Yamasaki uses the rooms primarily as " an hotel for
people of good intentions — ^those who work for better
conditions." I was proud to stay at this " hotel " and to
receive as a parting gift an old seppuku blade.

Which reminds tne that one night at a house in the
country I found myself sitting under photographs of the
late General and Countess Nogi and of the gaunt blood-
stained room of the depressing " foreign style " house in

' For Clime statistics, see Appendix VI,

THE SUICIDE OF GENERAL NOGI 55

which they committed suicide on the day of the fxmeral of
the Emperor Meiji.' One of my fellow-guests was a pro-
fessor at the Imperial University ; the other was a teacher
of lofty and unselfish spirit. They were both samurai. I
mentioned that a man of worth and distinction has said to
me that, while he recognised the nobility of Nogi's action,
he could but not think it imjustifiable. I was at
once told that Japanese who do not approve of Nogi's
action " must be over-influenced by Western thought."
" Those who are quintessentially Japanese," it was ex-
plained, " think that Nogi did right. Bodily death is
nothing, for Nogi still lives among us as a spirit. He
labours with a stronger influence. Many hearts were puri-
fied by his sacrifice. One of Nogi's reasons for suicide was
no doubt that he might be able to follow his beloved
Emperor, but his intention was also to warn many vicious
or unpatriotic people. Some politicians and rich people
say they are patriotic, but they are animated by selfish
motives and desires. Nogi's suicide was due to his loving
his fellow-countrymen sincerely. Surely he was acting
after the manner of Christ. Nogi crucified himself for the
people in order to atone in a measure for their sins and to
lead them to a better way of life."

I heard from my friends something of Nogi's demeanour.
The old general was a familar figure in Tokyo. In the
street cars — those were the days when they were not over-
crowded— he was always seen standing. His admirers
used to say that his face " beamed with beneficence."
But Nogi, though he loved to be within reach of the
Emperor and did his part as head of the Peers' School,
liked nothing better than to get away to the coimtry. He
was originally a peasant and he still possessed a cho of
upland holding. He was glad to work on it with the digging
mattock of the farmer.

1 Harahiri {aeppuku is the polite word) still happens. Just before writing
this note I read of the captain of the first company of the Japanese garrison
in a Korean town having committed seppuku because of a sense of responsi-
bility for the irregularities of subordinates. But of 7,239 suicides of men
in 1916 only 308 were by cold steel. Of 4,558 cases of women suicides
140' were by steel.

CHAPTER VII

OF " DEVIL-GON " AND YOSOGI

The oonRoiousness of a common purpose in mankind, or even the
acknowledgment that such a common purpose is possible, would alter the
face of world politics at once. — Geaham Wallas

There was a bad landlord who was nicknamed " Devil-
gon." He was shot. There was another bad landlord
who, as he was crossing a narrow bridge over a brook, was
" pistolled through the sleeve and tumbled into the
water." Although the murderer was well known, his name
was never revealed to the police, and the family of the
dead man was glad to leave the district. The villagers
celebrated their freedom by eating the " red rice " which
is prepared on occasions of festivity. In another village,
the guncho who spoke to me of these things said, there
were several usurious landlords. " The village headman got
angry. He called the landlords to him. He said to them
that if they continued to lend at high interest the people
would set fire to their houses and he would not proceed
against them. So the landlords became affrighted and
amended their lives." The rural people of Japan have
always three weapons against usvu-y, it was explained to
me. First, there may be tried injuring the offending
person's house — rural dwellings are mainly bamboo work
and mud — by bumping into it with the heavy palanquin
which is carried about the roadway at the time of the
annual festival. If such a hint should prove ineffective,
recourse may be had to arson. Finally, there is the pistol.
I remember someone's remark, " A man does not lose a
common mind and heart by becoming a landowner."

I could not travel about the rural districts without there
being brought under my eyes the conditions which lead
country girls to go to the towns as joro (prostitutes). A

GEISHA AND " JORO " 57

considerable agricultural authority who had been all over
Japan told me that he was in no doubt that most of the
girls adopted an immoral life through poverty. I spoke to
this man, who had been abroad, of the disgrace to Japan
involved in the presence of thousands of Japanese joro at
Singapore and so many other ports of the Asiatic mainland.
Did these women go there of their free will ? My in-
formant was of opinion that " half are deceived." I
remember that on the Japanese steamship by which I
went out to Japan there were several Japanese girls,
degraded in aspect and apparently in ill health, who were
returning from Singapore. They were shepherded by an
evil-looking fellow. The parting of these unfortunates
from their girl friends as the vessel was about to start was
a piteous sight. An official who called on me in Aichi —
I understood that he was the chief of the prefectural police
— told me that there were in the prefecture 2,011 girls in
222 houses, and that there were in a year 725,598 customers,
of whom 2,147 were foreigners. Sums of from 200 to
500 yen might be paid to parents for a girl for a three-years
term. Food and clothes were also provided, but the girls
were almost invariably drawn into debt to the keepers, and
not more than 15 per cent, were able to return to their
villages. All the girls in the houses had alleged poverty
as the reason for their being there.i

Because I was told that the moral condition of the town
of Anjo — population 17,000 — where the agricultural school
of the prefecture is situated, had improved since its estab-
lishment, I asked for some statistics. I found that there
were 23 registered geisha, no joro, 50 teahouse girls with
dubious characters and 55 sellers of saM. Against these
figures were to be counted 19 Buddhist temples of four
sects with 19 priests and 20 Shinto shrines with 4 priests.

I met a schoolmaster who had prepared a history of his
village in a dozen beautifully written volumes. He had
been a vegetarian for fifteen years because, as a Buddhist,
he beheved that " all living things are in some degree my
relatives." I picked up from him a variant on " the early
bird catches the worm." It was, " The early riser may find

1 See Appendix VII.

58 OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGl

a lost rin " (tenth of a farthing). He gave me another
proverb, " The contents of a spitting pot, like riches,
become fouler the more they accumulate."

I heard of temples which were promoting rural improve-
ment by means of lanterns. In one village the lanterns
were at the service of borrowers at three different places.
The inscription on the lanterns says, " Think of the mercy
of Buddha who illuminates the darkness of your heart."
There is written in smaller characters, " If you live half a
ri away you need not return this lantern." Three hundred
lanterns are lost or damaged in a year, but paper lanterns
are cheap.

One temple has a society composed of those who have
family graves in its grounds. These people " study how
to get the most abundant crop," There is a prize for the
best cultivated tan. Under this temple's auspices there
is not only a co-operative credit and purchase association,
a poultry society and an annual exhibition of agricultural
products, but a school for nurses — they are " taught to be
nurses not only physically but morally." The boys and
girls of the village are invited to the temple once a month
and " told a story." The youngsters are asked to come to
a " learning meeting" where they must recite or exhibit
something they have written or drawn ; " blockheads as
well as clever children are encouraged." A fund is being
raised so that " a genius who may be suffering from poverty
may be able to get proper education." Then there is a
Women's Religious Association which aims at " the
improvement, necessary from a religious point of view,
in the home and of agricultural business." Sermons are
given to 500 women monthly. The society sent comfort
bags, containing letters, tooth-brushes and sweets, to
soldiers at the taking of Tsingtao. A similar organisation
for men had for thirteen years listened to a monthly
lecture by a well-known priest. It sends occasional sub-
scriptions outside the village. Finally, this praiseworthy
temple issues every month 20,000 copies of a 4|-sen
magazine.

The Shinto shrines of the prefecture have in all a little
more than 40 cho of land. Someone has hit on the plan

THE PROBLEM OF THE PRIESTS 59

of getting the agricultural societies of the county and
villages to provide the priests with rice seed of superior
varieties, the crop of which can be exchanged with farmers
for common rice. This is done on a profitable basis, because
the shrines exchange unpolished rice for polished. A go of
seed rice makes only about "5 go when husked.

I walked along the road some little way with a Buddh t
priest. In answer to my enquiry he said that as a Buddhist
he felt no difficulty about the bag strung across his shoulders
being of leather, for the founder of his sect (Shinshu) ate
meat. Even a strict Buddhist might nowadays eat animals
not intentionally killed, animals which had not been seen
alive and animals which were killed painlessly. But my
companion abstained as much as possible from meat. As
to the reason why some priests were inactive in the work of
rural amelioration, he supposed that their poverty, the
tradition of devoting themselves to unworldly business
and the fact that many of them were hereditary priests
accounted for it. He dwelt on the things in common
between Shinshu and Christianity and said that, next to
the teaching of the head of the agricultural college in the
prefecture, the preaching of a missionary had led him to
work for the good of his village.

In my host's house in the evening someone happened to
quote the proverb, " Richer after the fire," It means, of
course, that after the fire the neighbours are so ready with
help that the last state of the victim of the fire is better
than the first. The view was expressed that hitherto
charitable institutions of some Western patterns had not
been so much needed in Japan as might be supposed.'
" Those who go to Europe from Japan are indeed much
surprised by the number of institutions to help people."
Here, however, is the story of an institution coming into
existence in a village : " There was a man who was thought
to be rich, but he lived like a miser. His shoji were made
of waste paper and his guests received tea only. So he
was despised. But many years afterwards it was found
that for a long time he had been collecting books. Then,
to the surprise of everybody, he built a library for his

1 See Appendix. VIII.

60 OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGI

village. He is not at all proud of this and those who
ridiculed him are now ashamed."

I was invited to a " Rural Life Exhibition." Some
agricultural produce was shown, but three hundred of the
exhibits were manuscript books or diagrams. One dia-
gram illustrated the development in a particular county of
the use of two bactericides, formalin and carbon bisulphide.
The formalin was in use to the value of 2,000 yen. Then
there was a wall picture, a sort of Japanese " The Child :
What will he Become ? " The good boy, aged fifteen,
was shown spending his spare time in making straw rope
to the value of 3 sen 3 rin nightly, with the result that after
thirty years of such industry he became a rural capitaUst
who possessed 1,000 yen and lived in circumstances of
dignity. In contrast with this virtuous career there was
shown the rural rake's progress. A youth who was in the
habit of laying out 3 sen 3 rin riotously in sweet-shops
was proved to have wasted 1,000 yen in thirty years : the
prodigal was justly exhibited fleeing from his home in debt.

One of the books on exhibition mentioned the volumes
most in demand at some village library. I translatethetitles :

Physical and Intellectual Training
About being Ambitious
, The Housewife of a Peasant Family
The Management of a Farm
The Days when Statesmen were Boys
Culture and Striving
Essence of Rural Improvement
A Hundred Beautiful Stories
The Art of Composition
The Preparation of the Conscript
A Medical Treatise
A Translation of " Self-Help "
Nature and Human Life
The Glories of Native Places
Anecdotes concerning Culture
Lives of Distinguished Peasants
Mulberry Planting
Chinese Romances
Glories of this^^Peacefu] Reign
NinomiyaSontoku

AN EGOIST'S STORY 81

I noticed among the exhibits a short autobiography of a
farmer, an engaging egoist who wrote :

" As a young man my will was not in study and though
I used my wits I did many stupid things and the results
were bad. Then I became a little awakened and for two
years I studied at night with the primary school teacher.
After that I thought to myself in secret, ' Shall I become a
wise man in this village, or, by diligently farming, a rich
man ? ' That was my spiritual problem. Then all my
family gathered together and consulted and decided ' that
it would suit the family better if I were to become a rich
man, and I also agreed. To accomplish that aim I increased
my area imder cultivation and worked hard day and night.
I cut down the cryptomeria at my homestead and planted
in their stead mulberries and persimmons. And I slowly
changed my dry land into rice fields (making it therefore
more valuable). The soil I got I heaped up at the home-
stead for eighteen years until I had 28,000 cubic feet. I
was able then to raise the level of my house which had
become damp and covered with mould. The increase of
my cultivated area and of the yield per tan and the improve-
ment of my house and the practice of economy were the
delight of my life. I felt grateful to my ancestors who gave
me such a strong body. Sometimes I kept awake all night
talking with my wife about the goodness of my ancestors.
Also when in bed I planned a compact homestead. I once
read a Japanese poem, ' What a joy to be bom in this
peaceful reign and to be favoured by ploughs and horses.'
(Most Japanese farming is done without either horses or
ploughs.) It went deeply into my heart. Also I heard
from the school teacher of four loves : love of State,
love of Emperor, love of teacher and love of parent. I
have been much favoured by those loves. I also heard
the doctrines of Ninomiya : sincerity, diligence, moderate
living, unselfishness. I felt it a great joy to live remember-
ing those doctrines. I also went to the prefectural
experiment station and studied fruit growing and my
spirit was much expanded. I returned again to the station
and the expert talked to me very earnestly. I asked for
a special variety of persimmon. The expert sent to Gifu
prefecture for it. I planted the tree and made its top into
six grafts. It bore fruit and many passers-by envied it.

'■ Family in the French sense.

62 OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGI

Two years after that I grafted five hundred trees and sold
the grafted stock."

Several villages sent to the exhibition statistics of great
interest. One village set forth the changes which had taken
place in the social status of its inhabitants.^ Some com-
munities were represented by statements of their hours of
labour.^ One small community's tables showed how many
of its inhabitants were " diligent people," how many
" average workers " and how many " other people." »
A county agricultural association had painstakingly
collected information not only about the work done in a
year ' and the financial returns obtained by three typical
farmers but about the way in which they spent what they
earned.^

On my way back from the exhibition I heard the story
of a priest. When fourteen years of age he obtained seeds
of cryptomeria and planted them in a spot in the hills.
He also practised many economies. When still in his
teens he asked permission to take two shares in a 50-yen
money-sharing club, but was not allowed to do so as no
one would believe that he could complete his payments.
He persisted, however, that he would be able to pay what
was required and he was at length accepted as a member.
At twenty he became priest of a small temple which was in
bad repair and had a debt of 125 yen. He brought with
him his 100 yen from the club and the young cryptomeria.
He planted the trees in the temple grounds. He said, " I
wish to rebuild the temple when these trees grow up." He
cultivated the land adjoining his temple and contrived to
employ several labourers. At last the cryptomeria grew
large enough for his purpose and he rebuilt the teniple,
expending on the work not only his trees but 600 yen
which he had by this time saved. Then he proceeded to
bring waste land into cultivation. At the age of sixty-two
he gave his temple to another priest and went to live in a
hut on the waste land. There came a tidal wave near the
place, so he went to the sufferers and invited five families

» See Appendis IX. » See Appendix XI.

' See Appendix X. * See Appendix XII.

^ See Appendix XIII.

FBiroiNCr AT AN AG-aiOULTUEAIi SCHOOL, p. SO

WAB MEMENTOES AT THE SAME SCHOOL— ALL SCHOOlfe HAVE SOME

[03

REAL BUDDHISTS 63

to his now cultivated waste land. He gave them each a
tan of land and the material for building cottages and
showed them how to open more land.

A good judge expressed the opinion that Buddhism was
flourishing in 80 per cent, of the villages of Aichi, but this
was in a material and ceremonial sense. The prefectures
of Aichi and Niigata had been called the " kitchens of
Hongwanji " ' (the great temple at Kyoto), such liberal
contributions were forthcoming from them. " A belief
in progress," this speaker said, " may be a substitute for
religion for many of our people ; another substitute is a
belief in Japan." A village headman from the next pre-
fecture (Shidzuoka) said : " People in my village do not
omit to perform their Buddhist ceremonies, but they are
not at their hearts religious. In our prefecture the influ-
ence of Ninomiya is greater than that of Buddhism. If the
villagers are good it is Ninomiyan principles that make
them so. Under Ninomiyan influence the spirit of associa-
tion has been aroused, thriftiness has been encouraged and
extravagance reprimanded."

I told Mr. Yamasaki one day that there was an old
Scotswoman who divided good people into " rael Christians
and guid moral fowk." What I was curious to know was
what proportion of Japanese rural people might be fairly
called " real Buddhists " and what proportion " good
moral folk." " There are certainly some real Buddhists,
not merely good moral folk," he assured me. " If you
penetrate deeply into the lives of the people you will be
able to find a great number of them. In ordinary daily
life, during a period when nothing extraordinary happens, it
is not easy to distinguish the two classes ; but when any
trouble comes then those real religious people are undis-
mayed, while the ordinarily good moral people may some-
times go astray. The proportion of religious people is
rather large among the poor compared with the middle
and upper classes. These poor people are always weighted
with many troubles which would be a calamity to persons

' It was recently stated that the consent of the authorities was awaited
for collections to the amount of 20 million yen, of which 13i million were
for the two Hongwanjis.

64. OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGl

of the middle or upper classes. Such humble folk get
support for their lives from what is in their hearts. Though
they may suffer privation or loss they are glad that they
can live on by the mercy of Buddha. There are some
religious people even among those who are not poor. They
are usually people who have lost some of their riches
suddenly, or a dear child, or have been deprived of high
position, or have met some kind of misfortune. Some-
times a man may become religious because he feels deeply
the misfortunes or miseries of a neighbour or the miseries
of war. Or his religion may come by meditation. A man
who begins to be religious is not, however, at once noticed.
On the contrary, if he is a true believer his daily life will
be most ordinary."

One day I passed a primary school playground. The
girls had just finished and the boys were beginning Swedish
drill. Everyone engaged in the drill, including the master,
was barefoot.

I saw that some of the cottages were built in an Essex
fashion, of puddled clay and chopped straw faced with
tarred boards. Some dwellings, however, were faced with
straw instead of boards. They had just had their wall
thatch renewed for the winter.

In one spot there was a quarter of a mile of wooden
aqueduct for the service of the paddy fields. Much agri-
cultural pumping is done in Aichi. I visited an irrigation
installation where pumps (from London) were turning
barren hill tops into paddy fields.' The work was being
done by a co-operative society of 550 members who had
borrowed the 40,000 yen they needed from a bank on an
imdertaking to repay in fifteen years.

It was .stated that common paddy near Anjo had been
bought at 5,000 yen per cho and not for building purposes.
When one member of our company said, " The farmers here
are rivalling each other in hard work," the weightiest
authority among us replied : " What the farmer must do
is to work not harder but better. At present he is not
working on scientific principles. The hours he is spending
on really profitable labour are not many. He must work

' For yields of new paddy, see Appendix XTV.

WHY FARMERS ARE POOR 65

more rationally. In 26 villages in the south-west of Japan,
where farming calls for much labour, it was found that the
number of days' work in the year was only 192. Statistics
for Eastern Japan give 186 days.' As to a secondary
industry, one or two hours' work a night at straw rope
making for a month may bring in a yen because the
market for rope is confined to Japan. The same with
zori, a coarse sort being purchasable for 2 sen a pair. But
supplementary work like silk-worm culture produces an
article of luxury for which there is a world market."

When we returned home my host was kind enough
to summarise for me — the general reader may skip here —
some of the reasons set forth by a professor of agricultural
politics for the farmer's position being what it is :

1. The average area cultivated per family is very small.

2. The law of diminishing return.

3. Imperfection of the agricultin-al system. Mainly
crop raising, not a combination of crop and stock raising,
as in England. No profitable secondary business but silk-
worm culture. Therefore the distribution of labour
throughout the year is not good and the number of days
of effective labour is relatively small.

4. The commercial side of agriculture has not been
sufficiently developed.

5. There has been a rise in the standard of Uving.
In the old days the farmer did not complain ; he thought
his lot could not be changed. He was forbidden to adopt
a new calhng and he was restricted by law to a frugal
way of living. Now farmers can be soldiers, merchants or
officials and can live as they please. They begin to com-
pare their standard of living with that of other callings.
What were once not felt to be miseries are now regarded
as such.

6. Formerly the farmer had not the expense of education
and of losing the services of his sons to the army. There
is also an increase in taxation. A representative family
which incurred a public expenditure, not including educa-
tion, of 12-86 yen in 1890, paid in 1898 19-68 yen. In
1908 it was faced by a claim for 84-28 yen.*

1 See Appendix XII.

2 It would be from 80 to 100 yen now.

66 OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGl

7. Although the area of land does not increase in relation
to the increase of population, the size of the peasant
family is increasing owing to the decrease of infanticide
and abortion and the development of sanitation.

8. The farmer suffers from debts at high interest.

9. The character, morality and ability of the farmer are
not yet fully developed.

10. Formerly the farmer lived an economically self-
contained existence. He had no great need of money.
He must now sell his produce on a market with wider and
wider fluctuations.

11. There are many expensive customs and habits, for
instance the two or three days' feasting at weddings and
funerals.

During the evening I was told this story. In a village
in a far part of the prefecture there lived a farmer called
Yosogi. He was a thrifty and dihgent man. When he
became old he gave all that he had to his son. But the
old man could not stop working. He would go to the farm
and help his son. The son did not like this. He wanted
his old father to rest. In the end he found that the only
way to cope with his industrious parent was to work
very hard and leave him nothing to do. But the old man
was not to be balked. He took himself off to the hill-
side and began to make a paddy field where there had
never been a paddy field before. To make a paddy field
on such a slope is a difficult task. The land must be
embanked with stones and then levelled. The building
of the strong embankment alone calls for much labour.
The old man toiled very hard at his job and sometimes his
son in despair sent his labourers to help him. At length
the paddy field was finished. But it was only a tenth of
a tan in area. When the son saw the small result of so
much labour he said to his father, " I grieve for the way
you have toiled. You have laboured hard for many days
and my labourers have helped you, but all that has been
accomplished is the making of a paddy field so small and
distant that it is uneconomical."

To this the old man replied : " When you go to Tokyo
and seethe graveyard at Aoyama you will behold there many

THE OLD MAN'S STORY 67

monuments of generals and ministers of State. Their
merits and their works in this world are described on those
monuments. But do you know where the monument of
the famous hero Kusunoki Masashige is ? It is near Kobe,
and it is not more than half as big as those monuments at
Tokyo. Do you know where the monument of the great
Taiko is ? It is in Kyoto, but it is only recently that this
monument was put up. Thus the monuments of our
greatest heroes are small or have been erected recently.
The reason is that it is unnecessary to raise big monuments
for them because what they did in their lives was in itself
their monument. They built their monument in the hearts
of the people. Therefore we can never judge from the
size of the monument the kind of work which was accom-
plished by the man who sleeps under it. Monuments are
not only for ministers and warriors. We peasants can
also erect monuments in our own way. To open a new
paddy field, to plant the bare hillside with trees, these are
our monuments. How lonely it would be for me if there
were no monument left after my death. However small
this paddy field may be, it will not be forgotten so long as
it yields for your posterity the blessing of its rice crop."
" Happily," the interpreter added, " the old man did not
die so soon as he thought he would do. He lived for several
years and planted the bare hillside with trees. Now the
wood which grows there is worth 10,000 yen."

A peasant proprietor expressed the conviction that good-
ness in a family was " not the result of its own efforts
but of the accumulation of ancestral effort." The " ances-
tral merits and good spirit remain in the family." On the
problem of rich and poor he quoted the proverb, " The very
rich cannot remain very rich for more than three genera-
tions ; a poor family cannot long remain poor." He said
that he would be interested to know what I found to be
" the causes of our villagers becoming good or bad."
" For ourselves," he said, quoting another proverb, '"At
the foot of the lighthouse it is dark.' "

THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER VIII

THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

Toyo-asMwara-no-chiiho-aki-mizuho-no-Kuni (Land of plenteous ears
of rice in the plain of luxuriant reeds).

The vast difference between Far Eastern and Western
agriculture is marked by the fact that, except by using
such a phrase as shallow pond — and this is inadequate,
because a pond has a sloping bottom and a rice field
necessarily a level one — ^it is difficult to describe a rice
field in terms intelligible to a Western farmer. The Japan-
ese have a special word for a rice field, to, water field,
written gg , It will be noticed that the ideograph looks like
a water field in four compartments. Another word,
hata or hatdke,^ written j^, tells the story of the dry or
upland field. It is the ideograph for water field in associa-
tion with the ideograph for fire, and, as we shall see later
on, when we make acquaintance with " fire farming," an
upland field is a tract the vegetation of which was originally
burnt off.

Many of us have seen rice growing in Italy or in the United
States. But in Japan ' the paddies are very much smaller
than anything to be seen in the Po Valley and in Texas.
Owing to the plentiful water supply of a mountainous
land, cultivation proceeds with some degree of regularity
and with a certain independence of the rainy season ;
and there has been applied to traditional rice farming
not a few scientific improvements.

* Haia (upland field) is not to be confounded with hara (prairie, ^Ider-
nesB, moor, often erroneously translated, plain).

a Kioe is grown in every prefecture. The largest total yields are in
Niigata, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Aiohi, Yamagata, Ibariki and Chfba.

THE RICE PADDY

There is a kind of rice with a low yield called upland
rice which, like corn, is grown in fields. But the first
requisite of general rice culture is water. The ordinary
rice crop can be produced only on a piece of ground on
which a certain depth of water is maintained.

In order to maintain this depth of water, three things
must be done. The plot of ground must be made level,
low banks of earth must be built round it in order to keep
in the water, and a system of irrigation must be arranged
to make good the loss of water by evaporation, by leakage
and by the continual passing on of some of the water to
other plots belonging to
the same owner or to other
farmers. The common
name of a rice plot is
paddy, and the rice with
its husk on, that is, as it
is knocked from the ear
by threshing, is called
paddy rice. The rice ex-
ported from Japan is some
of it husked and some of
it polished.

Some 90 per cent, of the
rice grown in Japan is
ordinary rice. The remain-
ing 10 per cent, is about
2 per cent, upland and 8 per cent, glutinous ' — the sort
used for making the favourite mocU (rice flour dumplings,
which few foreigners are able to digest). It would be
possible to collect in Japan specimens of rice under
4,000 different names, but, like our potato names, many
of these represent duplicate varieties. Rice, again re-
minding us of potatoes, is grown in early, middle and
late season sorts."

> See Appendix XV.

» The overage yield of the three kinds at Government experimental
farms — the middle variety yields best and next comes the late variety —
is about 2i koku per tan or roughly (a koku being about 5 bushels and a
tan about a quarter of an acre) about 45 bushels per acre. The average
yield of ordinary rice in Japan in an ordinary year is 40i bushels. In the

A 200-Yeabb-old Japanese DBAWiNa
OF THE Bice Plant

70 THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

Just one-half of the cultivated area of Japan is devoted
to paddy, but there is to be added to this area under
rice more than a quarter million acres producing the
upland rice, the jrield of which is lower than that of paddy
rice. The paddy and upland rice areas together make
up more than a half of the cultivated land. The paddies
which are not in situations favourable to the production
of second crops of rice (they are grown in one prefecture
only) are used, if the water can be drawn off, for growing
barley or wheat or green manure as a second crop.'

It is not only the Eastern predilection for rice and the
wet condition of the country, but the heavy cropping
power of the plant ' — 500 go per tan above barley and wheat
yields — ^that makes the Japanese farmer labour so hard to
grow it.' Intensively cultivated though Japan is, the
percentage of cultivated land to the total area of the country
is, however, little more than half that in Great Britain.'
This is because Japan is largely mountains and hills.
Level land for rice paddies can be economically obtained
in many parts of such a country by working it in small
patches only. There is no minimum size for a Japanese
paddy. I have seen paddies of the area of a counterpane
and even of the size of a couple of dinner napkins.

The problem is not only to make the paddy in a spot
where it can be supplied with water, but to make it in such
a way that it will hold all the water it needs. It must be
level, or some of the rice plants will have only their feet
wet while others will be up to their necks. The ordinary
procedure in making a paddy is to remove the top soil,
beat down the subsoil beneath, and then restore the top
soil — there may be from 5 to 10 in. of it. But the best

bumper year of 1920 the average yield was 41 J bushels. In the year 1916
(to which most of the figures in this book, apart from the Appendix and
footnotes, in which the latest available figures are given, refer) there was
produced 58 J million koku of all kinds of rice, the value of which was 826i
million yen. The normal yield (average of 7 years, excluding the years of
highest and lowest production) is 54^ million koku. See Appendix XV.

1 For wheat and barley crops, see Appendix XVI.

2 A few rice plants may be seen growing at Kew.

° The cost of the rice crop and the income it yields are discussed in
Appendix XVII.
♦ See Appendix XVIII.

A PROBLEM OF THE PADDY 71

efforts of the paddy-field builder may be brought to
naught by springs or by a gravelly bottom. Then the
farmer must make the best terms he can with fortune.

Paddies, as may be imagined from their physical limita-
tions, are of every conceivable shape. There is assuredly
no way of altering the shape of the paddies which are
dexterously fitted into the hillsides. But large numbers of
paddies are on fairly level ground.' There is no real need
for these being of all sizes and patterns. They are what
they are because of the degree to which their construction
was conditioned by water-supply problems, the financial
resources of those who dug them or the position of neigh-
bours' land. And no doubt in the course of centuries there
has been a great deal of swapping, buying and inheriting.
So the average farmer's paddies are not only of all shapes
and sizes but here, there and everywhere.

Therefore there arose wise men to point out that for a
farmer to work a number of oddly shaped bits of land
scattered all about the village was uneconomical and out
of date. (Like the old English strip system which still
survives in the Isle of Axholme.) So what was called an
adjustment of paddy fields was carried out in many places.
The farmers were persuaded to throw their varied assort-
ment of fields into hotchpot and then to have the mass cut
up into oblong fields of equal or relative sizes. These were
then shared out according to what each man had con-
tributed. In some cases a little compensation had to be
given, for there were differences in the qualities as well as
the areas of the holdings. But reasonable justice was
eventually done all round, and ever afterwards a farmer,
now that his holding was in adjoining tracts, might spend

1 In Japanese rural statistics the word plain may be said to mean a tract
of land which is neither cultivated nor timbered nor used for the purposes
of habitation. Sometimes it is called prairie, but this is not always correct
as it is very often a barren waste, a tract of volcanic ash, or an area producing
bamboo grass. Some of this land, however, could be cultivated after
proper irrigation, etc. In this note, plains is employed in the ordinary
acceptation of the word. Of such plains there are several. The plain in
which Tokyo is situated is 82,000 acres in extent. The traveller from Kobe
to Tokyo passes through the Kinai plain in which Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka
stand. It is said to feed 2^ million people. Four other plains are reputed
to feed 7^ million.
7

72 THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

his time working in his paddies instead of in walking to and
from them. Because many unnecessary paths and divi-
sions between paddies were done away with there was
brought about a saving of labour and increased efficiency
of cultivation. There was also a little more land to culti-
vate and the paddies were big enough for an ox or a pony
to be employed in them, and the water supply was better
and sufficiently under control for floods to be averted.'
In brief, costs were lower and crops were better.'

Thus all over Japan nowadays one sees considerable
tracts of adjusted paddy fields. They are a joy to the
rural sociologist. In its way there has been nothing like
it agriculturally in our time. For each of these little
farmers valued his odds and ends of paddy above their
agricultural worth. He or his forbears had made them
or bought them or married into them. And he believed
that his own paddies were in a condition of fertility sur-
passing not a few, and he doubted greatly whether after
adjustment he would find himself in possession of as valu-
able land as his own. Sometimes also he believed that his
paddies were especially fortunate geomantically.' Yet,
convinced by the arguments for adjustment, the peasant
agreed to the proposed rearrangement, let his old tracts
go and accepted in exchange neat oblongs out of the com-
mon stock. Sometimes so great was the change brought
about in a village by adjustment that more than the paddies
were dealt with. Cottages were taken to new sites and the
bones in many little grave plots were removed. In a
village in which there had been an exhumation of the bones
of 2,700 persons and a transference of tombstones, I was
told that the assembling together of the remains of the
departed in one place " had had a unifying effect on the

1 Rivers supply about 65 per cent, of the paddy water and reservoirs
about 21 per cent. The remainder has to be got from other sources.

2 An acreage of a tan is aimed at, but it is frequently larger; it may even
be 4 tan (an acre). The cost ranges from about 8 yen to 60 yen per tan. The
average increase in yield after adjustment is about 16 per cent., to which
must be added the yield of the new land obtained, say 3 per cent, of the
area adjusted. The consent of half the owners is required for adjustment.

» Once when a friend in Tokyo had trouble with her servants a maid
informed her that the house waa unlucky because a certain necessary
apartment faced the wrong point of the compass.

FARMING IN SLUDGE 78

community." In this village within a period of twelve
years 96 per cent, of the paddies had been adjusted.'

An advantage of adjustment which has not yet been
mentioned is that adjusted paddies can usually be dried
off at harvest and can therefore be put under a second crop,
usually of grain. More than a third of the paddy-field
area of the country can be dried off, and therefore produces
a second crop of barley or wheat. The farmer has two
advantages if, owing to adjustment or natural advantages,
he is able to dry off his land. Of the first or rice crop, if he
is a tenant farmer, he has had to pay his landlord perhaps
60 per cent, in rent, less straw ; * but the second crop is his
own. The further advantage is that second-crop land can
be cultivated dry shod. One-crop paddy is under water
all the year round, and must be cultivated with wet feet
and legs.

It is because more than half the paddies are always under
water that rice cultivation is so laborious. Think of the
Western farm labourer being asked to plough and the
allotment holder to dig almost knee-deep in mud. Al-
though much paddy is ploughed with the aid of an ox, a
cow or a pony,' most rice is the product of mattock or
spade labour. There is no question about the severity of
the labour of paddy cultivation. For a good crop it is
necessary that the soil shall be stirred deeply.

Following the turning over of the stubble under water,
comes the clod smashing and harrowing by quadrupedal or
bipedal labour. It is not only a matter of staggering about
and doing heavy work in sludge. The sludge is not clean
dirt and water but dirty dirt and water, for it has been
heavily dosed with manure, and the farmer is not fastidious
as to the source from which he obtains it.* And the sludge

1 In the whole of Japan by 1919 two million and a half acres had
been adjusted or were in course of adjustment.

» The rent is usually 57 per cent, of the rice harvest in the paddies and
44 per cent, (in cash or kind) of the crops on the non-paddy laud. Any
crop raised in the paddies between the harvesting of one rice crop and the
planting out of the next belongs to the farmer. (All taxes and rates are
paid by the landlord, and amount to from 30 to 33 per cent, of the rent.)
The area under paddy and the area of upland under cultivation are
almost equal.

' See Appendix XIX. * See Appendix XX.

74 THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

ordinarily contains leeches. Therefore the cultivator must
work uncomfortably in sodden clinging cotton feet and leg
coverings. Long custom and necessity have no doubt
developed a certain indifference to the physical discomfort
of rice cultivation. The best rice will grow only in mud
and, except on the large uniform paddies of the adjusted
areas, there is small opportunity for using mechanical
methods.

One day when I went into the country it happened to
be raining hard, but the men and women toiled in the
paddies. They were breaking up the flooded clods with a
tool resembUng the " pulling fork " used in the West for
getting manure from a dung cart. On other farms the
task of working the quagmire was being done by two
persons with the aid of a disconsolate pony harnessed to
a rude harrow. The men and women in the paddies kept
off the rain by means of the usual wide straw hats and loose
straw mantles, admirable in their way in their combination
of lightness and rainproofness. Often, besides the farmer's
wife, a young widow or a young unmarried woman may
be seen at work, but, as was once explained to me, " The
old Miss is not frequent in Japan." ^

Planting time arrives in the middle of June or there-
abouts, when the paddy has been brought by successive
harrowings into a fine tilth or rather sludge. It is illus-
trative of the exacting ways of rice that not only has it to
have a growing place specially fashioned for it, it cannot
be sown as cereals are sown. It must be sown in beds
and then be transplanted. The seed beds have been
sown in the latter part of April or the early part of May,
according to the variety of rice and the locality.' The
seeds have usually been selected by immersion in salt
water and have been afterwards soaked in order to advance
germination. There is a little soaking pond on every farm.
By the use of this pond the period in which the seeds are
exposed to the depredations of insects, etc., is diminished.
The seed bed itself is about the width of an onion bed, in
order that weeds and insect pests may be easily reached.

1 In 1920 there were 38,922,437 males and 38,083,073 females.
° See Appendix XXI.

THE COMMUNAL SEED-BED 75

The seed bed is, of course, under water. The seed is
dropped into the water and sinks into the mud. Within
about thirty or forty days the seedlings are ready for
transplanting. They have been the object of unremitting
care. Weeds have been plucked out and insects have
been caught by nets or trapped. There is a contrivance
which, by means of a wheel at either end, straddles the
seed bed, and is drawn slowly from one end to the other.
It catches the insects as they hop or fly up.

In many localities specially fine varieties are grown for
seed on the land of the Shinto shrines. In other localities
special sorts are raised in ordinary paddies but surrounded
by the rope and white paper streamers which represent a
consecrated place. In not a few villages there are com-
munal seed beds so that many farmers may grow the same
variety, and there may be a considerable bulk for co-
operative sale.

At transplanting time every member of the family
capable of helping renders assistance. Friends also give
their aid if it is not planting time for them too. The
work is so engrossing that young children who are not at
school are often left to their own devices. Sometimes they
play by the ditch round the paddies and are drowned.
Five such cases of drowning are reported from three pre-
fectures on the day I write this. The suggestion is made
that in the rice districts there should be common nurseries
for farmers' children at planting time.

The rate at which the planters, working in a row across
the paddy, set out the seedlings in the mud below the
water, is remarkable.^ The first weeding or raking takes
place about a fortnight after planting. After that there
are three more weedings, the last being about the end of
August. All kinds of hoes are used in the sludge. They
are usually provided with a wooden or tin float. But most
of the weeding is done simply by thrusting the hand into
the mud, pulling out the weed and thrusting it back into
the sludge to rot. The back-breaking character of this
work may be imagined. As much of it is done in the hot-
test time of the year the workers protect themselves by wide-

1 See Appendix XXII.

76 THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

brimmed hats of the willow-plate pattern and by flapping
straw cloaks or by bundles of straw fastened on their backs.

A sharp look-out must be kept for insects of various sorts.
In more than one place I saw the boys and girls of element-
ary schools wading in the paddies and stroking the young
rice with switches in order to make noxious insects rise.
The creatures were captured by the young enthusiasts with
nets. The children were given special times off from
school work in which to hunt the rice pests and were
encouraged to bring specimens to school.

There is no greater dehght to the eye than the paddies in
their early green, rippled and gently laid over by the wind.
(One should say greens, for there is every tint from the
rather woe-begone yellowish green of the newly planted
out rice to the happy luxuriant dark green of the paddies
that have long been enjoying the best of quarters.) As
harvest time approaches,' the paddies, because they are
not all planted with the same variety of rice, are in patches
of different shades. Some are straw colour, some are
reddish brown or almost black. A poet speaks of the
" hanging ears of rice." Rice always seems to hang its
head more than other crops. It is weaker in the straw
than barley, but rice frequently droops not only because of
its natural habit, but because it has been over-manured or
wrongly manured or because of wind or wet.

Beyond wind,' insects and drought, floods are the
enemies of rice. When the plants are young, three or four
days' flooding do not matter much, but in August, when
the ears are shooting, it is a different matter. The sun
pom-s down and soon rots the rice lying in the warm water.
Sometimes the farmer, by almost withdrawing the water
from his paddies, raises the temperature of the soil with
benefit to the crop.

The farmer is fortunate who is able to get the water
completely out of his paddies by the time harvest arrives,

1 The harvest extends from mid-September in the north ol Japan to
the end of October or beginning of November in the south. The harvest
is taken early in the north for fear of frost.

• The " 210th day " (counted from the beginning of spring), when flower-
ing commences, is so critical a period that the weather conditions during
the twenty-four hours in every prefecture are reported to the Emperor.

THE SLUSHY HARVEST 77

but, as we have seen, two-thirds of the paddies must be
harvested in sludge. Many crops are muddied before they
can be cut. Sometimes on the eve of harvest the farmer
wades in and tries, by arranging the fallen stems across one
another, to keep some of the ears out of the water. But
he is not very successful. Rice may lie in the wet a week
or even the best end of a fortnight without serious damage.
But all that this means is that within the period specified
it may not sprout. It must be damaged to some extent
even by a few days' immersion. The reason why it is not
damaged more than it is is no doubt, first, because rice is
a plant which has been brought up to take its chances with
water, and in the second place because the thing which is
known to the housewife as rice is not really the grain at
all but the interior of the grain.

Western farmers are hard put to it when their grain
crops are beaten down by wind and rain ; Japanese agricul-
turists, because they gather their harvest with a short
' sickle, do not find a laid crop difficult to cut. But these
harvesters are very muddy indeed. When the rice is cut
and the sheaves are laid along the low mud wall of the
paddy they are still partly in the sludge. We know how
miserable a wet harvest is at home, but think of the slushy
harvest with which most Japanese farmers struggle every
year of their lives. The rice grower, although year in and
year out he has the advantage of a great deal of sunshine,
seldom gets his crop in without some rain. How does he
manage to dry his October and November rice ? By means
of a temporary fence or rack which he rigs up in his paddy
field or along a path or by the roadside. On this structure
the sheaves are painstakingly suspended ears down. Some-
times he utilises poles suspended between trees. These
trees, grown on the low banks of the paddies, have their
trunks trimmed so that they resemble parasols.

When the sheaves are removed in order to be threshed
on the upland part of the holding, they are carried away at
either end of a pole on a man's shoulder or are piled up on
the back of an ox, cow or pony. The height of the pile
under which some animals stagger up from the paddies
gives one a vivid Qonception of " the last straw,''

78 THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

Threshing is usually done by a man, woman, girl or
youth taking as many stems as can be easily grasped in
both hands and drawing the ears, first one way and
then another, through a horizontal row of steel teeth.
The flail is not used for threshing rice but is employed
for barley. Another common way of knocking out grain
is by beating the straw over a table or a barrel. There
are all sorts of cheap hand-worked threshing machines.
After the threshing of the rice comes the winnowing,
which may be done by the aid of a machine but is
more likely to be effected in the immemorial way, by
one person pouring the roughly threshed ears from a
basket or skep while another worker vigorously fans the
grain. The result is what is known as paddy rice.
The process which follows winnowing is husking. This is
done in the simplest possible form of hand mill. Before
husking the rice grain is in appearance not unlike barley
and it is no easy matter to get its husk off. The husking
mill is often made of hardened clay with many wooden
teeth on the rubbing surface. After husking there is
another winnowing. Then the grains are run through a
special apparatus of recent introduction called mangoku
doshi, so that faulty ones may be picked out. The result is
unpolished rice.

It looks grey and unattractive, and imfortunately the
unprepossessing but valuable outer coat is polished away.
This is done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree
trimk or out of a large stone. One may see a young man
or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar with a
heavy wooden beetle or mallet. Often the beetle is fastened
to a beam and worked by foot. Or the polishing apparatus
may be driven by water, oil or steam power. Constantly
in the country there are seen little sheds in each of which a
small polishing mill driven by a water wheel is working
away by itself. After the polishing, the mangoku doshi is
used again to free the rice from the bran. This polished
rice is still further polished by the dealer, who has more
perfect mills than the farmer.

The farmer pays his rent not in the polished but in the
husked rice. At the house of a former daimyo I saw an

PLASTIJv^rf OUT EICE SBEDLIilGS. p. 73

PUSH-OAKT FOK OOLLECTIOS OF FERTILISBE (TOKYO), p. 49

[70

"BLACK SAKE" 79

instrument which the feudal lord's bailiff was accustomed
to thrust into the rice the tenants tendered. If when the
instrument was withdrawn more than three husks were
found adhering, the rice was returned to be recleaned.
There are names for all the different kinds of rice. For
instance, paddy rice is momi ; husked rice is gemmai ; half-
polished rice is hantsukimai ; polished rice is hakumai ;
cooked rice is gohan.

A century ago the farmer ate his rice at the gemmai stage,
that is in its natural state, and there was no beri-beri. The
" black sak6 " made from this gemmai rice is still used in
Shinto ceremonies. In order to produce clear saki the rice
was polished. Then well-to-do people out of daintiness had
their table rice polished. Now polished rice is the common
food. Half-polished rice may be prepared with two or
three hundred blows of the mallet ; fully polished or white
rice may receive six, seven or eight hundred, or even it
may be a thousand blows.

CHAPTER IX

THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION

I thank whatever gods there be. . . . — Hbnlby
I

How many people who have not been in the East or in the
rice trade realise that rice, in the course of the polishing it
receives from the farmer and the dealer, loses nearly half
its bulk ? A necessary part of the grain is lost. No wonder
that sensible people in Japan and the West demand the
grey unpolished rice. In Japan some enterprising person
has started selling bottled stuff made from the part of the
rice grain that is rubbed off in the polishing process. It
does not look appetising. An easier thing would be to
leave some of the coating on the rice. One thinks of what
Smollett said of white bread :

" They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter.
Thus they sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratifica-
tion of a misjudging eye, and the tradesman is obliged to
poison them in order to live."

Although, for economy's sake, a considerable amount of
barley is eaten with or instead of rice, it may be said in a
general way that the Japanese people, like so many millions
of other Asiatics, have rice for breakfast, rice for lunch
and rice for dinner. If they have anything to eat between
meals it is as like as not to be rice cakes — to the foreigner's
taste a loathly, half -cooked compost of rice flour or pounded
rice and water, a sort of tepid imderdone muffin. We in
the West have bread at every meal as the Japanese have
rice, but we eat our bread not only as plain bread but as
toast and bread-and-butter ; we also ring the changes on
brown, white and oat bread.

Among the covered lacquer dishes on the little table set

THE TASTE FOR RICE 81

before each kneeling breakfaster, luncher or diner in
Japan there is one which is empty. This is the rice bowl.
When the meal begins — or in the case of an elaborate dinner
at the rice course — the maid brings in a large covered
wooden copper-bound or brass-bound tub or round lac-
quered box of hot rice. This rice she serves with a big
wooden spoon, the only spoon ever seen at a Japanese
meal. A man may have three helpings or four in a bowl
about as big as a large breakfast cup. The etiquette is
that, though other dishes may be pecked at, the rice in one's
bowl must be finished. The usage on this point may have
originated in the feeling that it was almost impious to
waste the staple food of the country. It is not difficult to
pick up the last rice grains with the wooden hashi (chop-
sticks), for the rice is skilfully boiled. (Soft rice is served to
invalids only.) But when the bowl is almost empty the
custom is to pour into it weak tea or hot water, and then
to drink this, so getting rid of the odd grains. It is through
omitting to drink in this way that foreigners get indigestion
when at a Japanese meal they eat a lot of rice.

At first it is not easy for the foreigner to believe that
people can come with appetite to several bowls of plain
rice three times a day.' But good rice does seem to have
something of the property of oatmeal, the property of a
continual tastiaess. Further, the rice eater picks up now
and then from a small saucer a piece of pickle which may
have either a salty or a sweet fermented taste. The
nutrition gained at a Japanese meal is largely in soups in
which the bean preparations, tofu and miso, and occasionally
eggs, are used. And there is no country in the world where
more fish is eaten than in Japan. The coast waters and
rivers team with fish, and fish — afresh, dried and salted,
shell-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all sorts of
ingenious treatment — is consumed by almost everybody.

The Japanese are in no doubt that the foreign rice
which is brought into the country to supplement the home
supply is inferior to their own.' Inferior means that they

1 For estimate of daily oonsumpiion of rice by Japanese, see Appendix
XXIII.

s For ptatistios of imported and exported rice, see Appendix XXIV.

82 RICE BOWL, GODS AND NATION

prefer the flavour of their own rice, just as most Scots
prefer oatmeal made from oats grown in Scotland.

In the year of the Coronation — it took place three years
after the Emperor's accession — two prefectures had the
honour of being chosen to produce the rice to be placed
before gods. Emperor and dignitaries at Kyoto. The
work was not undertaken without ceremony. I was a
witness of the rites performed at the planting of the rice
in one of the prefectures. Plots had been prepared with
enormous care. Along the top of the special fencing were
the Shinto straw bands and paper streamers. A small ^ ^
shrine had been built to overlook the plots. Even the in-
struments of the little meteorological station near, by which
the management of the crop would be guided, were sur-
rounded by straw bands and streamers — religion protecting
science. The mattocks and other implements which had
been used in the preparation of the paddy or were to be
used in getting in the crops and in cultivating, harvesting,
threshing and cleaning it were all new. Even the herring
which had manured the plot had been " specially selected
and blessed." Further, there was a special bath-house
where the young men and women who were to plant the
rice had washed ceremonially at an early hour.

We had reached the spot through a crowd of twenty or
thirty thousand people who were gathering to witness the
ceremony. A covered platform had been built in front
of the rice field shrine, and on either side were large roofed-
in spaces for some scores of Shinto priests and the favoured
spectators. The ceremony lasted two hours. It carried
us magically away from a Japan of frock coats to Japan of
a thousand, it may be two thousand years ago. Between
the wail of ancient wood and wind instruments and the
cinema operators who missed nothing external and some
bored top-hatted spectators who furtively puffed a cigar-
ette before the ceremony came to an end,' what a gulf !

' Japanese. I was the only foreigner present.

THE GODS DESCEND 88

Platter after platter of food, sometimes rice, sometimes
vegetables, sometimes fruit, sometimes a big fish, was
passed by one priest to another in the sunlight until
all the offeriags were reverently placed by a special
dignitary on one of those unpainted, unvarnished, un-
decorated but exquisitely proportioned altars which
are an artistic glory of Shintoism. The shrine was
wholly open on the side of the rice field, and the high
priest was in full view as he stood before the altar with
bowed head and folded hands, his robe caught by the
breeze, and delivered in a loud voice his zealous invocation.
His words were stressed not only by an acolyte who
twanged the strings of a venerable harp, but by the song
of a lark which rose with the first strains of the harpist.
The purpose of the ceremony was to call down the gods
and to gain their blessing for the crop and the new reign.
At the moment of highest solemnity the thousands
assembled bowed their heads : the gods were deigning to
descend and accept the offering. More ancient music,
more ceremonial, and the gods having been called upon to
return to high heaven, the laden platters were gravely
removed, and the rice planting in the adjoining field began.
To the sound of drum the young men and women in
special costumes strode through the wicket into the mud
of the paddies, and, under the supervision of the director
of the prefectural agricultural experiment station in a silk
hat, planted out the tufts of rice seedlings in scrupulously
measured rows.

I asked a distinguished Japanese who was standing near
me — he is a Christian — how many of the educated people
in the assembly believed that the gods had descended.
His answer was, " I may not believe that the gods of a truth
descended, but I find something beautiful in calling on the
gods with a harp of Old Japan, and I do believe that our
humble and natural offering to-day may be acceptable
to whatever gods there may be and that it is a worthy
exercise for us to undertake and may also be conducive
to a good harvest." My friend attempted the following
rough rendering of a song which had been sung by the rice
planters before the shrine :

84 RICE BOWL, GODS AND NATION

This day the beginning of sowing at an auspicious time —

Long life to the rice !

May it be a token of the years of the Reign,

The seed of peace for the world —

May it start from this consecrated field !

One in heart we see to it that our seedlings are well matched.

Mikawa's ' millennium and the millennium of rice.

Let us pray for an abundant shooting.

Now let us plant the seedlings straight ;

Pleasing to the gods are the ways that are not crooked.

After this ceremony, in which the staple crop of the coun-
try and the labour of the farmer in his paddy field had been
honoured by the State and dignified by ancestral blessings,
there was luncheon in one of those deftly contrived reed-
covered structures, of the building of which the Japanese
have the knack, and the Governor asked some of us to say
a few words. Then on a raised platform in the open
there was enacted a comic interlude such as might have
been seen in England in the Middle Ages. In the evening
I was bidden to a dinner of the officials responsible for
the day's doings. The Governor made a kindly reference
to my labours and the local M.P. presented me with a
kimono length of the cotton material which had been
woven for the planters of the sacred rice.

Ill'

The production of rice has increased more quickly than
the growth of the population. If we consider, along with
the advance in population, the crops of the years 1882 and
1913, which were held to be average, and, in order to be
as up-to-date as possible, the normal annual yield ' of
the five-years period 1912-18, we find that, as between
1882 and 1913, the population increased 45 per cent,
and rice production increased 63 per cent., while as between
1882 and the normal annual yield period of 1912-18, the
population increased 55 per cent, and the crop 75 per cent.*

1 jThe old name for a considerable part of Aichi

2 Thia section of the chapter was written in 1921.

» For the way in which " normal yield " is arrived at, see p. 70.
» See Appendix XXV.

HOW THE FARMER STANDS 85

This is a noteworthy fact. But equally noteworthy is
the fact that in the 1882-1913 period, in which the pro-
duction of rice increased 63 per cent, and the population
only 45 per cent., the price of rice did not fall. On the
contrary it rose. This was due largely ^ to the fact that
people had begun to eat rice who had not before been able
to afford it. Many people who grow rice eat, as has been
noted, barley or barley mixed with a little rice. From
the 'eighties onwards more and more rice was eaten.*

The reason was that, what with the cash obtained from
cocoons through the enormous development of sericul-
ture,' what with the money received by the girls who had
gone to the factories, what with the growth of big cities
causing an increased demand for vegetables, eggs and
especially fruit at good prices, what with the use of better
seed and more artificial manure, what with agricultural
co-operation, paddy-field adjustment and the taking-in
of new land, the farmer, in spite of increased taxation,'
was doing better, or at any rate was minded to live better.
In the thirty-years period 1882-1913, his crop increased
63 per cent, although his area under cultivation increased
by only 17 per cent. In the following pages we shall
hear more of the methods by which the farmer's receipts
have been increased. We shall hear also, alas ! of the ways
in which his expenditure has increased. He is indeed in a
trying situation. Everything depends on his character
and education and on the influences, social and political,
moral and religious, under which he lives. That is why
this book, in devoting itself to an examination of the
foundations of an agricultural country, is concerned with
rural sociology rather than with the technique of crops and
cropping.

The outstanding problem of the rice grower is fluctuations
in price.' It is also the problem of the landlord, for rents
are fixed not at so much money but at so many koku of

> War with China, 1894 ; with Russia, 1904.
2 For farmers' diet, see Appendix XXVI.

» Farmers in serioultural districts live better than the ordinary rice
farmers.
* See Appendix XXVII. ^ See Appendix XXVHI.

86 RICE BOWL, GODS AND NATION

rice. This means that on rent day the farmer must pay
the same amount of rice whether his crop has been good
or bad. It also means that when the price of rice rises the
amount of rent is automatically raised. If rent were paid,
not in so many koku of rice but in money at a fixed amount,
the landlord would know where he was and the tenant
would be in an easier position, for when the rice crop failed
the price would be high and he would be able to meet his
rent by selling a smaller amount of rice. The counsel
of the prudent to the rice producer is to build storehouses
and not to sell the whole of his crop immediately after
harvest, but to extend the sale over the whole year, mar-
keting each month about the same amount if possible.
The Government Granary plan came into force in 1921,
some 3 million koku of unpolished rice being bought in
five grades at from 27 yen to 33 yen. In the year before
the War rice was selhng at 20 yen per koku (5 bushels).
The previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen — had risen
at times to 23 yen — an unheard-of price. Between 1894
and 1912 it had climbed merely from about 7 yen to a
maximum of 16 yen.' In the year in which the War broke
out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only
11 yen. By 1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.

The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in
1914 and 1915 (that is, 57,006,541 koku and 55,924,590
koku as compared with the 50,255,000 koku of the year
before the War, or the 51,312,000 which may be taken as
the average of the seven-years period 1907-13). Such
exceptional harvests as those of 1914 and 1915 showed
a surplus of from 4^ to 6 million koku over and above the
needs of the country, which are roughly estimated at 1
koku per head including infants and the old and feeble.
In 1916 it was established, when account was taken of
stored rice, that the actual surplus was something like
6 or 7 million koku. Therefore a fall in price took place.
The extent to which rice is imported and exported is shown
in Appendix XXIV. This Chapter would become much
more technical than is necessary if I entered into the
question of the correctness of rice statistics. Roughly, the

1 For prices, see Appendix XVII.

THE RICE RIOTS

statistics show a production 15 per cent, less than the actual
crops. Formerly the under-estimation was 20 per cent.
The practice has its origin in the old taxation system.

The notes for the account of rural life in Japan which
will be found in this book were chiefly made in the second
and third years of the War. Since that time there has
been an enormous rise in the price of everything. For a
time the farmers prospered as they had prospered in the
high rice-price years, 1912-13.' The high prices of all

[Haiti
Minister of AaMoxTLTUBE's Effobts to keep the Pbioe of Rioe
FROM Rising

grain as well as the fabulous price of raw silk (due to
increased export to America and to increased home
consumption) were a great advantage.

Then came the rice riots of the city workers, the general
slump and finally the commercial and industrial crash.
Raw silk fell nearly to one-third of its top price, and
farmers had to sell cocoons under the cost of production.
Everjrwhere countrymen and countrywomen employed in

1 The rise in prices towards the close of the War, with the rise in the
cost of living throughout the world, has been discussed on page xxv.
8

88 RICE BOWL, GODS AND NATION

the factories were discharged in droves. A large pro-
portion of these unfortunates returned to their villages
to dispel some rural dreams of urban Eldorado.

But this matter of the going up and coming down of
prices has but a passing interest for the reader. The only
economic fact of which he need lay hold is that in recent
years the farmers have been led into the way of spending
more money — in taxation as well as in general expenses
of living — and that, when account is taken of every
advantage they have gained from better methods of pro-
duction, they have pressing on them the limitations im-
posed by the size of their farms and their farming practice.
Whatever the prices obtained for the products of the soil,
climatic facts,' the character and social condition of the
people, their attitude towards life and authority and the
attitude of authority towards them remain very much the
same. And thus a narrative of things seen and heard
chiefly during the first years of the War is not at all out
of date even if it were not supplemented as it is by a plenti-
ful supply of notes containing the latest statistical data.

There is one curious exception only. The reader of these
pages will constantly come on references to the poverty
of the tenant farmers. They are, of course, practically
labourers, for they cultivate two or three acres only, and
at the end of the year, as has been shown, have merely
a trifle in hand and sometimes not that. Influenced by
the labour movement, which developed in the industrial
centres during and after the War,' this depressed class has
of late shown spirit. It has begun to assert its claims against
landowners. At the end of 1920 there were as many as
ninety associations of tenant farmers, and sixty of these
had been started for the specific purpose of representing
tenants' interests against landowners. Strikes of tenants
began and continue. The end of this movement of a
proverbially conservative class is not at all certain.'

The outstanding facts which are to be borne in mind
about agricultural Japan are that the population is as

1 See Appendix XXIX. > See Chapter XX.

" Recent figures show 400 tenants' associations, of which a third are
militant.

THE PRESSURE OF POPULATION 89

thick on the ground as the population of the British Isles
(thicker in reality, for so much of Japan is mountain and
waste) — ten times thicker than the population of the United
States ' — that Japan is primarily an agricultural country,
while Great Britain is largely a manufacturing and trading
country, and that only 15J per cent, of Japan proper
(including Hokkaido) is under cultivation against 27 per
cent, in Great Britain." The average area cultivated per
farming family in Japan, counting paddy and upland
together, is less than 3 acres. As the total population
of Japan is now (1921) 56 millions (55,960,150 in 1920,
plus the annual increase of 600,000), every acre has to feed
close on four persons. (" Even in Hokkaido," Dr. Sato
notes, " the average area per family is only 7^ acres.")
Happily the number of families cultivating less than 1|
acres is decreasing and the number cultivating from IJ
up to 5 acres is increasing.' In other words, the favourite
size of farm is one which finds work for all the members
of the farmer's family. As on small holdings all over the
world, it is found that profits are difficult to make when
help has to be paid for. The facts that in the last four
years for which figures are available the number of farming
families keeping silk-worms has risen by half a million
and that every year the area of land under cultivation
increases show that new ways of increasing income are
eagerly seized on.

• See Appendix X2f X and page 97. 2 See Chapter XX.

' See Appendix XXXI.

BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES : THE APOSTLE
AND THE ARTIST

CHAPTER X

A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

The signification of this gift of life, that we should leave a better
world for our successors, is being understood. — ^Meredith

To some people in Japan the countryman Kanz5 Uchi-
mura is " the Japanese Carlyle." To others he is a reli-
gious enthusiast and the Japanese equivalent of a troubler
of Israel. He appeared to me in the guise of a student of
rural sociology.

Uchimura is the man who as a school teacher " refused
to bow before the Emperor's portrait." ' He endured, as
was to be expected, social ostracism and straitened means.
But when his voice came to be heard in journalism it was
recognised as the voice of a man of principle by people
who heard it far from gladly. There is a seamy side to
some Japanese journalism « and Uchimura soon resigned
his editorial chair. He abandoned a second editorship
because he was determined to brave the displeasure of his

' The statement is, he told me, a calumny. He explained that he lost
his post for refusing to bow, not to the portrait, but to the signature of
the Emperor, the signature appended to that famous Imperial rescript on
education which is appointed to be read in schools. Uchimura is very
willing, he said, to show the respect which loyal Japanese are at all times
ready to manifest to the Emperor, and he would certainly bow before the
portrait of His Majesty ; but in the proposal that reverence should be
paid to the Imperial autograph he thought he saw the demands of a
" Kaiserism " — his word, he speaks vigorous English — ^whioh was foreign
to the Japanese conception of their sovereign, which would be inimical
to the Emperor's influence and would be bad for the nation.

' But journalism is one of the most powerful influences for good, and
some of the best brains of the country is represented in it. Papers like
the Jiji, Aadhi, Nichi Nichi, and the Osaka papers run in conjunction with
tbena have altogether a circulation approaching two millions.

THE "JAPANESE CARLYLE

countrymen by opposing the war with Russia. To-day
he deplores many things in the relations of Japan and
China.

Uchimura has written more than two dozen books, mostly
on religion. How I became a Christian has been translated
into English, German, Danish, Russian and Chinese, and
is to that extent a landmark in the literary history of Japan.
His Christianity is an Early Christianity which places him

Muzzled Editohs.

[Fuhei

in antagonism, not only to his own coimtrymen who are
Shintoists, Buddhists or Confucians, or vaguely National-
ists, but to such foreign missionaries as are sectarians and
literalists. His earliest training was in agricultural science,
and the welfare of the Japanese coimtryside is near his
heart. If he be a Carlyle, as his fibre and resolution, down-
right way of writing and speaking, hortatory gift, humour,
plainness of life and dislike of officials, no less than his cast
of countenance, his soft hat and long gaberdine-like coat

92 A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

have suggested, he is a Carlyle who is content to stay both
in body and mind at Ecclefechan. He is not, however,
like Carlyle, whom he calls " master," a peasant, but a
samurai.

" As you penetrate into the lives of the farmers and
discover the influences brought to bear on them," Uchimura
said to me in his decisive way, " there will be laid bare to
you the foundations of Japan. You know our proverb, of
course, No wa kuni no taihon nari (' Agriculture is the
basis of a nation ') ? Have you been to Nikko ? " This
seemed a little inconsequent, but I told him I had not
yet been to Nikko. (" Until you have seen Nikko," runs
the adage, " do not say ' splendid.' ") " How many of
the tourists who are delighted with Nikko," he went on,
" have heard how the richest farms near that town were
devastated ? A century ago a minister of the Shogun,
who realised that fertility depended on trees, saw to the
whole range of Nikko hills being afforested. It was a tract
twenty miles by twenty miles in extent. But the ' civilised '
authorities of our own days sold aU the timber to a copper
company for 8,000 yen. The company destroyed the fer-
tility of the district not only by cutting down the forest but
by poisoning the water with which the farmers irrigated
their crops. A member of Parliament gave himself with
such devotion to the cause of the ruined farmers that when
he died the ashes of his cremated body were divided and
preserved in four shrines erected to his memory."

It was a sad thing, said Uchimura, that the farmers
of Japan, because of the decreased fertility of the land due
to the denudation of the hUls of trees, and because of their
increased expenses, should be laying out " a quarter of their
incomes on artificial manures." " The enemies which Japan
has most to fear to-day," Uchimura declared, " are im-
paired fertility and floods."

It may be well, perhaps, to explain for a few readers
how floods do their ill work. The rain which falls on tree-
less mountains is not absorbed there. The water washes
down the mountain sides, bringing with it first good soil
and then subsoil, stones and rock. The hills eventually
become those peaked deserts the queer look of which must

"THE DEPTHS OF THE PEOPLE" 98

have puzzled many students of Japanese pictures. The
debris washed away is carried into the rivers, along with
trees from the lower slopes, and the level of the river beds
is raised. Because there is less space in the river beds
for water the rivers overflow their banks, and disastrous
floods take place. The farmers, the local authorities and
the State raise embankments higher and higher, but
embankment building is costly and cannot go on indefinitely.
The real remedy is to decrease the supply of water by plant-
ing forests in the mountains.' In many places the rivers
are flowing above the level of the surrounding country.
The imagination is caught by the fact that there are four
earthquakes a day in Japan ' and that within a twelvemonth
fires destroy 400 acres or so of buildings ; but every year,
on an average, floods, tidal waves and typhoons together
drown more than 600 people and cause a money loss
of 25 million yen ! Every year 10 J million yen are
spent by the State and the prefectures on river control
alone.

Uchimura put on his famous wideawake and we went
out for a walk. " I should like," he said, " to press the
view that the vaunted expansion of Japan has meant to
the farmers an increase of prices and taxes and of arma-
ments out of aU proportion to our population." '

Uchimura stood stock still in the little wood we had
entered. " There is one thing more," he added gravely.
" Before you can get deeply into your subject you must
touch religion. There you see the depths of the people. A
large part of the deterioration of the countryside is due to
the deterioration of Buddhism. You must ask about it.
You will see in the vUlages much of what your old writers
used to call * priestcraft.' You will hear of the thraldom
of many of the people. You will see with your own eyes

* For statistics of forests, see Appendix XXXII.

> A severe shook occurs on an average about every six years. The
eminent seismologist, Professor Omori, told me that he does not expect
an earthquake of a dangerous sort for a generation.

' The Oriental Economist, a Japanese publication, in the autumn of
1921 suggested the abandonment of all the extensions to the Empire
on the score that they had not been a benefit to Japan, and that she was
in no way dependent on them. See also Appendix XXXIII.

94 A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

that real Christianity may be a moral bath for a rural
district."

' ' The essentials, not the forms of Christianity," he de-
clared, would save the countryside by " brotherly union."
" Brotherly union " would make a better life and a better
agriculture. The rural class, he explained, was more
sharply divided than foreigners understood into owners
of land who lived on their rents and farmers who farmed.'
The division between the two classes was "as great as
an Indian caste division." " To the landowner who lives
in his village like a feudal lord the simple Gospel, with
its insistence on the sacredness of work, comes as an intel-
lectual revolution." Women as well as men of means
received from Christianity " a new conception of
humanity." They ceased to " look upon their own glory
and to take delight in the flattery of poor people." They
changed their way of speaking to the peasants. They
developed an interest, of which they knew nothing before,
in the spiritual and material betterment of the men,
women and children of their village.

I went a two-days journey into the country with Uchi-
mura. We stayed at the house of a landowner who was one
of his adherents. I found myself in a large room where
two swallows were flitting, intent on building on a beam
which yearly bore a nest. In this room stood a shrine
containing the ancestral tablets. The daily offerings were
no longer made, but Uchimura's coimsel, imlike that of
some zealots, was to preserve not only this shrine but the
large family shrine in the courtyard. Near by was an
engraving of Luther.

Uchimura spoke in the house to some thirty or more
" people of the district who had accepted Christianity."
His appeal was to " live Christianity as given to the world
by its founder." The address, which was delivered from
an arm-chair, was based on the fifth chapter of Matthew,
which in the preacher's copy appeared to contain cross-
references to two disciples called Tolstoy and Carlyle.* When
I was asked to speak I found that the women in the
gathering had places in front. " The remarkable effect of

1 See Appendix XXXIV.

CHILDREIT OATOHIjfa IlsrS330T3 ON' BIOB-SBED BEDS

7,«^Sti2»*''

MASTERS OF A COUNTRY SCHOOL AND SOME OP THE CHILDREN, p. 112

[95

"THE QUALITY OF EASTERN MORALITY" 95

Christianity among those who have come to think with us,"
Uchimura told me afterwards, " is seen most in their
treatment of women. Our host, had he not been a Christian,
would have been credited by public opinion with the posses-
sion of a concubine, and would not have been blamed for
it." When, after the speaking, we knelt in a circle and
talked less formally of how best to benefit rural people,
we were joined by the women folk. Later, when a dozen
of the neighbours were invited to dinner, it was not served
at separate tables for each kneeling guest, but at one long
table, an innovation " to indicate the brotherly relation."

" So you see," said Uchimura, as we walked to the
station in the morning, " in an antiquated book, which, I
suppose, stands dusty on the shelves of some of your
reformers, there is power to achieve the very things they aim
at." He went on to explain that he looked " in the lives of
hearers, not in what they say," for results from his teaching.
He believed in liberty and freedom, in sowing the seed of
change and reform and allowing people to develop as they
would. " Let men and women believe as they have light."

He spoke in his kindly way of how " the bond of a com-
mon faith enables Japanese to get closer to the foreigner
and the foreigner closer to the Japanese." There were
many things we foreigners did not understand. We did
not understand, for example, that " A man's a man for a'
that " was an imfamiliar conception to a Japanese. I was
to remember, when I interrogated Japanese about the
problems of rural life, that they had had to coin a word for
" problems." Above all, I must be careful not to " ex-
aggerate the quality of Eastern morality." Uchimura
asserted sweepingly that "morality in the Anglo-Saxon
sense is not found in Japan." We of the West underrated
the value of the part played by the Puritans in our
development. Our moral life had been evolved by the
soul-stirring power of the Hebrew prophets and of Christ.
To deny this was " kicking your own mother." Just as it
was not possible for the Briton or American to get his
present morality from Greece and Rome exclusively, it was
not possible for the Japanese to obtain it from the sources
at his disposal.

96 A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

The faults of the Eastern were that he thought too much
of outward conduct. Good political and neighbourly-
relations, kindliness, honesty and thrift were his idea of
morality. " To love goodness and to hate evil with one's
whole soul is a Christian conception for which you may
search in vain through heathendom." The horror which
the Western man of high character felt when he thought
of the future of the little girls in attendance on geisha
was not a horror generated by Plato. " Heathen life looks
nice on the outside to foreigners," but Confucianism,
Buddhism and Shintoism had all been weak in their attitude
towards immorality. It was Christianity alone which
controlled sexual life. Without deep-seated love of and
joy in goodness and deep-seated horror of evil it was
impossible to reform society.

Uchimura said that it had taken him thirty years to
reach the conviction that the best way of raising his country-
men was by preaching the religion of " a despised foreign
peasant." Many things he had been told by exponents
of Christianity now seemed "very strange," but there
remained in the first four books of the New Testament, in
the essence of Christianity, principles " which would give
new life to all men." Moved by this belief, Uchimura and
his friends gave their lives to the work of the Gospel, to a
work attended by humiliations ; " but this is our glory."

Japanese civilisation, he reiterated, was " only good in
the sense that Greek and Roman civilisations were good."
Modern Japan represented " the best of Europe minus
Christianity ; the moral backbone of Christianity is lack-
ing." " Probe a dozen Buddhist priests in turn," he said,
" and you find something lacking ; you don't find the
Buddhist or Confucian really to be your brother." '

1 What of the old story which I have heard from Uchimura and others
of the Confucian missionary to certain head hunters of Formosa ? After
many years of labour among them they promised to give up head hunting
if they might take just one more head. At last the good man yielded,
and told them that a Chinaman in a red robe was coming towards the
village the next day and his head might be taken. On the morrow the men
lay in wait for the stranger, sprang on him and cut ofi his head, only to
find that it was the head of their beloved missionary. Struck with re-
morse and realising the evil of head taking, the tribe gave up head hunting
for ever.

UNCULTIVATED JAPAN 97

" The greatness of England," he went on, " is not due
to the inherent greatness of the EngUsh people, but to the
greatness of the truths which they have received." In
considering the sources of national greatness, it was idle
to believe that some peoples were original and some not
original in their ideas and methods. Where were the
people to be found who were without extraneous influence ?
Where would England be without Greek philosophy,
Roman law, and Christianity ?

Our talk broke off as several peasant women passed us
on the narrow way by the rice fields. The mattocks they
carried were the same weight as their husbands' mattocks
and the women were going to do the same work as the men.
But the women were nearly all handicapped by having a
child tied on their backs. Uchimura, returning to his
objection to foreign political adventure, said that Japan,
properly cultivated, could support twice its present popula-
tion. There were many marshy districts which could be
brought into cultivation by drainage. Then what might
not forestry do ? But the progress could not be made
because of lack of money. The money was needed for
" national defence."

" For myself," said Uchimura, " I find it still possible
to believe in some power which will take care of inoffensive,
quiet, humble, industrious people. If all the high virtues
of mankind are not safeguarded somehow, then let us take
leave of all the ennobling aspirations, all the poetry, and
all the deepest hopes we have, and cease to struggle upward.
The question is whether we have faith." We still waited,
he declared, for the nation which would be Christian
enough to take its stand on the Gospel and sacrifice
itself materially, if need be, to its faith that right was
greater than might.

And so " impractical, outspoken to rashness, but
thoroughly sincere and experienced," as one of his apprecia-
tive countrymen characterised him to me, we take leave
of the " Japanese Carlyle." With whom could I have gone
more provocatively towards the foundation of things at
the beginning of my investigation in farther Japan ?

CHAPTER XI

THE IDEA OF A GAP

Bold is the donkey driver, O Khedive, and bold is the Khedive who
dares to say what he will believe, not knowing in any wise the mind of
Allah, not knowing in any wise his own heart.

The " Japanese Carlyle " is getting grey. It seemed well
to seek out some young Japanese thinker and take his view
of that " heathenism " concerning which Uchimura had
delivered himself so unsparingly. Let me speak of my first
visit to my friend Yanagi.

As a youth Yanagi was a lonely student. He took his
own way to knowledge and reUgion. The famed General
Nogi had been given by the Emperor the direction of the
Peers' School, but even under such distinguished tutelage
the stripling made his stand. His reading led him to write
for the school magazine an anti-militarist article. The
veteran, as I once learned from a friend of Yanagi, promptly
paraded the school, boys and masters. He spoke of dis-
loyal, immoral, subversive ideas, and bade the youthful
disturber of the peace attend him at his own house. When
Yanagi stood before Nogi and was asked what he had to
say, he replied with the question, " Don't you feel pain
because of sending so many men to death before Port
Arthur ? " '

Again I found my prophet in a cottage. It was a cottage
overlooking rice fields and a lagoon. From the Japanese
scene outdoors I passed indoors to a new Japan, Cezanne,
Puvis de Chavannes, Beardsley, Van Gogh, Henry Lamb,
Augustus John, Matisse and Blake — Yanagi has written
a big book on Blake which is in a second edition — hung

1 One ol the reasons assigned for the suicide of the General was thought*
of his responsibility for the terrible slaughter in the assaults on Port
Arthur.

A "HEATHEN'S" HOME 99

within sight of a grand piano and a fine collection of
European music' Chinese, Korean and Japanese pottery
and paintings filled the places in the dwelling not occupied
by Western pictures and the Western library of a man well
advanced with an interpretative history of Eastern and
Western mysticism. An armful of books about Blake and
Boehme, all Swedenborg, all Carlyle, all Emerson, all
Whitman, all Shelley, all Maeterlinck, all Francis Thomp-
son, and all Tagore, and plenty of other complete editions ;
early Christian mystics ; much of WiUiam Law, Bergson,
Eucken, Caird, James, Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Jefferies,
Havelock Ellis, Carpenter, Strindberg, " ^," Yeats,
Synge and Shaw ; not a little poetry of the fashion of
Vaughan, Traherne and Crashaw ; a well-thumbed Emily
Bronte ; all the great Russian novelists ; numbers of
books on art and artists — it was an arresting collection to
come on in a Japanese hamlet, and odd to sit down beside
it in order to talk of " heathen."

" Yes," said Yanagi — he speaks an English which re-
flects his wide reading — " our young maid, on being shown
the full moon the other night, bowed her head. I find this
natural instinct of some value. Our people have much
natiu-al feehng towards Nature. If modern Japanese art
has degenerated it is because it does not sufficiently find
out life in things. The sough of the wind in the trees
may have only a slight influence on character, but it is a
vital influence. I do not like, of course, the word ' heathen-
dom ' of which Uchimura seems so fond. I dearly admire
Christ, but most of the Christianity of to-day is not
Christ. It is largely Paiil. It is a mixture. It is not the
clear, pure, original thing. Christians must reform their
Christianity before it can satisfy us. In the East we now
see clearly enough to seek only the best that the West can
offer."

Yanagi said that the spontaneity and naturalness of
Eastern religions ought to be recognised. " You will find
Christians admiring Walt Whitman, but it is Whitman the
democrat they admire, not Whitman the prophet of natural-

' Mrs. Yanagi is one of the best contraltos heard at the now numerous
Japanese concerts of Western music.

100 THE IDEA OF A GAP

uess." He spoke with appreciation of the Zen sect of Buddh-
ists. Many of the Zen devotees were " noble and had a
profound idea." He was unable to see " any difference at
all " between the best part of Buddhism and the best part of
Christianity. He said that his own mysticism was based
on science, art, religion and philosophy. " My sincerest
wish," he declared, "is to produce a beautiful reconcilia-
tion of these four. As it is, too often scientists and philoso-
phers have no deep knowledge of religion or art, artists
have no deep knowledge of religion or science, and the
religious have no idea of art. Surely the deepest religious
idea is the deepest artistic and philosophic idea. Perhaps
our scientists are in the poorest state just now with no
understanding of art or religion. Our scientists are im-
mersed in the problem of matter, our reUgious people in
the problem of spirit, and our artists forget that in dealing
with nature they are deahng with spirit as well as
body."

Faced by force and science when Commander Perry came,
Japan, in order to save herself from foreign colonisation,
had had to concentrate all her attention on force and
science. She had concentrated her attention with signal
success. But naturally she had had, in the process, to
slacken her hold somewhat on the spiritual life,

" Always remember how difficult the Japanese find it to
know which way to take. Their whole basis has been
shaken and on the surface all has become chaotic. Ten
years hence it will be possible to take a just view. There
is much reason for high hopes. For one thing, the burden
of old thought does not rest so heavily on us as might be
supposed. We are very free in many ways. In the matter
of religion Japan is the most free nation in the world. If
England were to become Buddhist it would sound strange
or exotic, but Japan is free to become what she may."

" There may be a great difference between one of our
temples and shrines and an English church," Yanagi pro-
ceeded, " but I cannot believe in the gap which some people
seem to see yawning between East and West. It is
deplorable that the world should think that there is such a
complete difference between East and West. It is usually

EASTERN MORALITY AND WESTERN 101

said that self-denial, asceticism, sacrifice, negation are
opposed to self-affirmation, individualism, self-realisation ;
but I do not believe in such a gap. I wish to destroy the
idea of a gap. It is an idea which was obtained analytically.
The meeting of East and West will not be upon a bridge over
a gap, but upon the destruction o? the idea of a gap.
" "In future, religion cannot be limited by this or that
sect or idea. Religion cannot be limited to Christianity,
Buddhism, Confucianism or Mahomedanism. Uchimura
says that it is the essence_of^ChristijiHity which has the
power to rescue Japan from its chaotic state. But the
essence of Buddhism can also contribute some important
element to the future of Japan. The notion that the
essence of Christianity and the essence of Buddhism are
far apart is artificial and prejudiced."

One day some weeks later I walked with Yanagi on the
hills. He said : " The weakest point in the^Ja£anes£
character is the lack of the power of guestioning., We are
repressed by our educational system. And so many things
come here at one time that it makes confusion. What is
so often taken for a lack of originality in us is a state
resulting from an immense importation of foreign ideas.
They have been overpowering. Many of us have no clear
ideas on life, society, sex and so on, and you will find it
difficult to get satisfactory answers to many questions
which you will want to ask."

As to morality, it was dangerous to say " this or that is
immoral." Morality was often merely custom. Ordinary
morality had scant authority. Critics of Japanese morahty
should not forget that, in the opinion of Japanese, Western
people were more erotic than they were. Western dancing —
not to speak of Western women's evening costumes — was
undoubtedly more erotic than Japanese dancing. Again,
the sexual curiosity of foreigners seemed stronger than
that manifested by Japanese. It was a well-known fact
that the girls at many hotels and restaurants had not a
little to complain of from foreign men who misjudged their
naive ways. It must be remembered that Japanese were
franker in sexual matters than Europeans and Americans.
Sexual ill-doing was not so much concealed as in Europe.

102 THE IDEA OF A GAP

A wrong impression of Japanese morality was taken away
by tom-ists whose guides showed them, as in Paris, what
they expected to see.

" I wonder," he said, " that Western visitors to Tokyo
who talk of our immorality are not struck by the fact that
in an Eastern capital a foreign lady may walk home at
night and be practically safe from being spoken to. The
Japanese are imdoubtedly a very kind people. They may
be unmoral, but they are not immoral."

" Most of our people do not understand liberty in the
mental sexual relations. Love is not free. In a very large
proportion of cases, indeed, parents would oppose a match
because a son or daughter had fallen in love. And if it is
difficult to marry for love it is not easy to fall in love.'
Society in which young men and young women meet is
restricted ; there are few opportunities of conversation.
Without liberty towards women there can be no perfect
serise of resjjonsibility towardi'tEeBn*'^^"'" " -

^Wiiat had been taugEiETo"womenr as the supreme virtue
was the virtue of sacrifice for father, husband, children. It
was most important to let women know the significance of
individualism. They were always offering themselves for
others before they became themselves. But the idea of
individuality was very little clearer to the Japanese man
than to the Japanese woman. People were too prone to
wish to give 100 yen before they had 100 yen. The
Japanese were the most devotional people in the world,
but they hardly knew yet the things to be devoted to.

Yanagi is a leading member of a small association of
literary men, artists and students who graduated together
from the Peers' School. They call themselves for no
obvious reason the Shirakaba or Silver Birch Society.
The intelligent and consistent efforts of these young men
to introduce vital Western work in literature, philosophy,
painting, sculpture, draughtsmanship and music, and the
large measure of success they have attained is of some
significance. Several members of the group belong to
the old Kuge families, that is the ancient nobility which

• Shinja, or suicide for love, the girl often being a geisha, is common.

THE WHITE BIRCH SOCIETY 103

surrounded the Emperor at Kyoto before the Restoration.
Cut off for centuries from military and administrative
activities by the dominance of the Shogunate Government,
the Kuge devoted themselves to the arts and the refine-
ments of life. For the exclusiveness of the past some
of their descendants substitute artistic integrity. The
Shirakaba has had for several years a remarkable magazine.
Its editor and its publisher, its size, its price and its date
of publication are continually changed ; it never makes
any bid for popularity; it expresses its sentiments in a
downright way and it has always been anti-official : yet it
survives and pays its way. Beyond the magazine, the
Society has had every year at least one exhibition of what
its members conceive to be significant modern European
work. The members have also supported a few Japanese
artists of outstanding sincerity. Through the Shirakaba
the influence of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Blake, Dela-
croix, Matisse, Augustus John, Beardsley, Courbet,Daumier,
Maillol, Chavannes and Millet, particularly Cezanne, Van
Gogh, Rodin and Blake, has been marked. The Silver
Birch group has never tired of extolling the great names of
Rembrandt, Diirer, El Greco, Van Eyck, Goya, Leonardo,
Michael Angelo, Tintoretto, Giotto and Mantegna.'

While an ardent Young Japan has formed and dissolved
many societies, movements and fashions, this Shirakaba
group has held fast and has gained friends by its sincerity,
its vision and its audacity.' Rodin encouraged the Shira-
kaba efforts to reproduce the best Western art by pre-
senting it with three pieces of sculpture.

" The intellectual man does no fighting," Froude has
written. Why do not Yanagi and his friends make a
stand on public questions ? " Because," he said, " at

1 " I am inclined to think," wrote Yanagi in 1921, in a paper on Korean
art, " that we have paid if anything rather too much attention to European
works while making little efiort to pay attention to what lies much nearer
to us."

' Police Standards. — ^The sale of one issue of the magazine was
prohibited by the police, who found a nude " antagonistic to the ordinary
standard of public morals." The editors' answer next month — the police
standard being, " No front views " — ^wafl to publish half a dozen more
nudes with their backs to the reader.
9

104 THE IDEA OP A GAP

the present stage of our development it is almost impossible
to take up a strong attitude, and because, important though
political and social questions are, they are not, in our
opinion, of the first importance. To artists, philosophers,
students of religion, such problems are secondary. More
important problems are : What is the meaning of this
world ? What is God ? What is the essence of religion ?
How can we best nourish ourselves so as to realise our own
personalities ? Political and social problems are secondary
for us at present ; they are not related emotionally to our
present conditions.'

For the East the Root,
For the West the Fruit.

" If we faced such problems directly we should probably
make them primary problems, as you do in Great Britain.
Our present attitude does not prove, however, that we are
cold to political and social problems. In fact, when we
think of these terrible political and social questions they
make us boil. But you will understand that in order to
have something to give to others, we must hayejbhat some-
thiiigT We are seeking after that something."

Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution
which the new artistic movement in Japan, under the in-
fluence of modern Western art, was making to the solution
of political and social questions.^ The interest of the
younger generation in Post Impressionism was " quite

1 It will be remembered that this conversation took place in the summer
of 1915 at the outset of my investigation. Since then, as noted throughout
this book, economic questions have increasingly pressed themselves
forward, I may mention that in 1919 Yanagi wrote a vigorous and moving
protest against misgovemment in Korea. In a recent letter to me he says :
" You know that I am going to establish a Korean Folk Art Society
in Seoul. This is a big work, but I want to do it with all my power for
love of Korea. I approach the solution of the Korean question by the
way of Art. Politics can never solve the question. I want to use the
gallery as a meeting-place of Koreans and Japanese. People cannot
quarrel in beauty. This is my simple yet definite belief." Yanagi's
manifesto on his project made one think of the age when the great culture
of China and India glowed across the straits of Tsushima in the wake of
early Buddhism.

2 A well-known member of the Shirakaba group started two years ago
an " ideal village " among the mountains. It is an effort towards social
freedomi in which the police manifest a continuous interest.

EAST MEETS WEST IN HARMONY 105

disharmonious with the ordinary attitude towards mili-
tarism," European art broke down barriers in the Japanese
mind. When the younger generation, nourished on higher
ideals, grew up, it would be the State, and there would be
a more hopeful condition of affairs. People generally
supposed that social questions were the most practical ; but
religious, artistic, philosophic questions were, in the
truest sense of the word, the most practical.

Yanagi went on to tell of his devotion to Blake. He
could not understand " why Englishmen are so cool to
him." He asked me how it was that there was no word
about Blake in Andrew Lang's work on English literature.
" I cannot imagine," he said, " why such an intelligent man
could not appreciate Blake." Yanagi regarded Blake as
" the artist of immense will, of immense desire, and a man
in whom can be seen that affirmative attitude towards life,
exhibited later by Whitman." Yanagi spoke also of
" Anglo-Saxon nobility, liberty, depth of character and
healthiness," and of "a deep and noble character " in
English literature which he did not find elsewhere. Whit-
man, Emerson, Poe and William James were " the crown
of America."

As I close this chapter I recall Yanagi's library, in the
service of which, bettering Mark Pattison's example, two-
thirds of its owner's income was for some time expended.
I remember the thatched dwelling overlooking the quiet
reed-bound lagoon with its frosty sunrises, red moonrises
and apparitions of Fuji above the clouds seventy miles
away. No Western visitor whom I took to Abiko failed
to be moved by that room, designed by Yanagi himself in
every detail, wherein East meets West in harmony. I have
made note of his Western books but not of the classics and
strange mystic writings of Chinese and Korean priests in
piles of thin volumes in soft bindings of blue or brown. I
have not mentioned a Rembrandt drawing and next to it the
vigorous but restful brush lines of an artist priest of the
century that brought Buddhism to Japan ; severe little
gilt-bronze figures of deities from China, a little older ;
pottery figures of exquisite beauty from the tombs of Tang,
a little later ; Sung pottery, a dynasty farther on ; Korai

106 THE IDEA OF A GAP

celadons from Korean tombs of the same epoch ; and whites
and blue and whites of Ming and Korean Richo. On the wall
a black and yellow tiger is " burning bright " on a strip of
blood-red silk tapestry woven on a Chinese loom for a
Taoist priest 500 years ago. Cimabue's portrait of St.
Francis breathes over Yanagi's writing desk from one side,
while from the other Blake's amazing life mask looks down
" with its Egyptian power of form added to the intensity
of Western individualism." These are Yanagi's silent
friends. His less quiet friends of the flesh have felt that
this room was a sanctuary and Yanagi a priest of eternal
things, but a priest without priestcraft, a priest living
joyously in the world. Above his desk is inscribed the line
of Blake :

Thou also, dwellest in eternity

and Kepler's aspiration, " My wish is that I may perceive
God whom I find everywhere in the external world in like
manner within and without me."

ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND

BACK)

CHAPTER XII

TO THE HILLS
(TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMa)

Nothing which concerns a, cotmiryraaxi is a matter of unconcern to
me. — Tbbenoe

During the month of July I went from one side of Japan
to the other, starting from Tokyo, across the sea from which
Hes America, and coming out at Niigata, across the sea
from which lies Siberia.

We first made a four hours' railway run through the
great Kwanto plaia (6,000 square miles). TraveUing is
comfortable on such a trip, for travellers take off their
coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy — he has the word
" Boy " on his collar in English — brings fans and bedroom
slippers. The fans, which on one side advertised " Hotels
in European style, directly managed by the Imperial
Government Railway," ^ offered on the other a poem and
a drawing. A poem addressed to a snail played with the
idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji. The poem was
composed by a poet who wrote many delightful hokku
(seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy
with the humblest creatures. One poem is :

Come and play with me.
Thou orphan sparrow !

Like Burns, Issa addressed a poem to a louse.

As we climbed from the vicinity of the sea to higher
lands someone recalled the saying about saints living in

' For statistics of railways, see Appendix XXXV.
107

108 TO THE HILLS

the mountains and sages by the sea. Speaking of religion,
one man said that he had known of people giving half their
income to religious purposes. He also mentioned that for
some years his mother had gone to hear a sermon in a
Japanese Christian church every Sunday, but she still
served her Buddhist shrine.

It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu
volcano — the odour of the sulphurous hot water was every-
where in the district — that I first enjoyed the attentions of
the blind amma {masseur or masseuse), the call of whose
plaintive pipe is heard every evening in the smallest com-
mtmity. Amma san rubbed and pommelled me for an
hour for 28 sen. The amma does not massage the skin, but
works through the yukata (bath gown) of the patient. I
had my massaging as I knelt with the other guests of the
inn at an entertainment arranged for the benefit of resi-
dents. The entertainers, professional and non-professional
— the non-professionals were local farmers — knelt on a low
platform or danced in fi"ont of it. They were extra-
ordinarily able. A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers
was about a yokelish yoimg wrestler and a daimyo. An-
other described the woes and suicide of an old-time Court
lady.

The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb
of the volcano. Its lower slopes were covered with a
variety of that knee-high bamboo with a creeping root,
which is so troublesome to farmers when they break up new
ground. One variety is said to blossom and fruit once in
sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has
traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which
the bamboo fruits the mice increase and multiply exceed-
ingly. Suddenly their food supply gives out and they
descend to the plains to live with the farmers.

At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour
of the volcano. Soon we were near the top, where the white
trunks and branches of dead trees and scrub, killed by
falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an awesome desola-
tion of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At
the summit we looked down into the churning horror of the
volcano's vat and at different spots saw the treacly sulphur

THE CRATER 109

pouring out, brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to
whom there first came the idea of hell and a prisoned re-
vengeful power must surely have looked into a crater. In
the throat of this crater there seethed and spluttered an
ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The
sound of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea.
The air was stifling. It was very hot, and there was a
high eerie wind.

Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over
some of the orifices, and in this way had compelled the
volcano to furnish them with sulphur free from dirt. The
production of sulphur in Japan is valued at close on three
million yen.

As we went on our journey we spoke of the sturdiness
and cheeriness of our chief carrier, who had told us that he
was seventy. I asked him if he thought it fair that he
should have to walk so far on a hot day with so much to
carry while we were empty-handed. He replied that it
might appear to be unjust, but that he was happy enough.
He said that he had lived long and seen many things,
and he knew that to be rich was not always to be happy.
He quoted the proverb, " Sunshine and rice may be found
everywhere," and the poem which may be rendered, " If
you look at a water- fowl thoughtlessly you may imagine
that she has nothing to do but float quietly on the water,
yet she is moving her feet ceaselessly beneath the surface."

At the little hot spring inn where we next stayed, insect
powder was on sale, not without reasonable hope of patron-
age by the guests. The Asahi once facetiously reported
that I had taken on a journey three to (six pecks) of insect
powder. The chief protector of the prudent traveller in
remote Japan is a giant pillowslip of cotton. He gets into it
and ties the strings together under his chin. The mats
and futon of old-fashioned hotels are full of fleas. The hard
cylindrical Japanese pillow has no doubt its tenants also,
but I never got accustomed to using it, and laid my head
on a doubled-up kneeling cushion.

A foot-high partition separated the men's hot bath from
the women's. My cold bath in the morning I found I had
to take unselfconsciously at a water-gush in front of the

110 TO THE HILLS

house. As the food was poor here, we were glad of our
tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course in
a remote part. Apart from ordinary Japanese food, there
are usually available at the inns chicken, fish of some sort,
eggs, omelettes and soups. With a pot of jam or two and
some powdered milk in one's bag, one can live fairly well.
Fresh milk can now be got in unlikely places on giving
notice overnight. It is produced for invalids and children.
If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller who has
resolved to see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people
will try to do their best, one will not fare so badly. On the
railway one is well catered for by the provision of bento
(lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms of stations. These
chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold fish or
chicken and assorted pickles, and provide an appetising
and inexpensive meal.

Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district.
One man spoke of a troop of eighty monkeys. In the high
mountain regions there are still people who escape the
census and live a wild life. The records of a gipsy folk
called Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800 years.

As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw
evidence of " fire-farming." It is the simple method by
which a small tract with a favourable aspect is cleared
by fire and cultivated, and then, when the fertility is ex-
hausted, abandoned. I was assured that after fire-farming
" tea springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking
may have been introduced from China there could not
be such large areas of tea growing wild if tea were not
indigenous.

Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vege-
tation. I noticed that trees were often felled in order that
mushrooms might be grown on and around their trunks.
There is a large consumption of these tree-grown mush-
rooms in Japan and an export trade worth two and a half
million yen.

An inscribed stone by our path was a reminder of the
belief in " mountain maidens." They have the undoubted
merit of not being " so peevish as fairies." At another
stone, before which was a pile of small stones, a farmer

'- ' 'iftifejisita»i ■„„».: ri|».^

IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES, AND A BALE OP EICE
The photograph was taken in Aichi-ken. p. 73

[111

THE PROBLEM OF THE HILLS 111

told us that when a traveller threw a stone on the heap he
"left behind his tiredness."

In the first house we came to we found a young widow
turning bowls with power from a water-wheel. She could
finish 400 bowls in a day and got from one to five sen
apiece. She said that she had often wished to see a
foreigner. Like nearly all the girls and women of the
hills, she wore close-fitting blue cotton trousers.

We descended to a kind of prairie which had a tree here
and there and roughly wooded hills on either side. This
brought us to the problem of the wise method of dealing
with the enormous wood-bearing areas of the country, the
timber crop of which is so irregular in quality. Japan
requires many more scientifically planned forests. As coal
is not in domestic use, however, large quantities of cheap
wood are needed for burning and for charcoal making.
The demand for hill pasture is also increasing. How shall
the claims of good timber, good firewood, good charcoal-
making material and good pasture be reconciled ? In the
county through which we were passing — a county which,
OAving to its large consumption of wood fuel, needs rela-
tively little charcoal — the charcoal output was worth as
much as 35,000 yen a year.

We saw " buckwheat in full bloom as white as snow," as
the Chinese poem says. At a farmhouse there was a box
fixed on a barn wall. It was for communications for the
police from persons who desired to make their suggestions
for the public welfare privately.

Towards evening, when we had done about twenty miles,
I managed to twist an ankle. Happily I had the chance
of a ride. It was on the back of a dour-looking mare which
was accompanied by her foal and tied by a halter to the
saddle of a led pack-horse which was carrjdng two large
boxes. Thus impressively I did several miles in descending
darkness and across the rocky beds of two rivers. The
horse of this district is a downcast-looking animal in spite
of the fact that it is stalled under the same roof as its
owner and is thus able to share to some extent in his family
life.
At the town at which we at last arrived, the comfort of

112 TO THE HILLS

the hot bath was enhanced by a sturdy lass of the inn who
unasked and unannounced came and applied herself
resolutely to scrubbing a;nd knuckling our backs.

The next day I went to the principal school. There
were in the place three primary schools, one with a branch
for agricultural work. The " attendance " at the principal
school, where there were 379 boys and girls, was 98 per cent,
for the boys and 94 per cent, for the girls.' The buildings
were most creditable to a small place fifty miles from a
railway station. The community had met the whole cost
out of its official funds and by subscriptions. More than
half the expenditure of many a village is on education, which
in Japan is compulsory but not free. One cannot but be
impressed by the pride which is taken in the local schools.
The dominating man-made feature of the landscape is less
frequently than might be supposed a temple or a shrine :
where the picture which catches the eye is not the vast
expanse of the crops of the plain or the marvels of terracing
for hill crops, it is the long, low school building, set almost
invariably on the best possible site. The poorly paid men
and women teachers are earnest and devoted, and their
influence must be far-reaching. They are rewarded in part,
no doubt, by the respect which pupils and the general
public give to the sensei (teacher).* At the school I
visited, the children, as is customary, swept and washed out
the schoolrooms and kept the playground trim. Above one
teacher's desk were the following admonitions :

Be obedient.
Be decent.
Be active.
Be social.
Be serious.

" Be serious " ! — graver small folk sit in no schools in
the world. Here, as usual, corporal punishment was never
given. I suggested to teachers all sorts of juvenile delin-

' The percentage of children " attending " school for the whole of Japan
is officially reported in 1918 as : cities, 98-18 per cent. ; villages, 99-23
per cent. ; but this does not mean daily attendance.

2 Since 1919 the salaries of elementary school teachers have been raised
to 26, 16 a«d 15 yen per month, according to gradg.

THE WAY OF TRANSGRESSORS 113

quencies, but their faith in the sufficiency of reprimands,
of " standing out " and of detention after school hours was
unshaken.

A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had
cost 4,000 yen, a large sum in Japan, where wood and
village labour are equally cheap. It was to be used chiefly
for the gymnastics which are steadily adding to the stature
of the Japanese people. At one end there was an opening,
about 20 ft. across and 5 ft. deep, designed as an honourable
place for the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, which
are solemnly exposed to view on Imperial birthdays.^

Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a
belief in education, one of the reasons for the building of
new schools and adding to old ones is to be found in the
recent extension of the period of compulsory attendance.
It used to be from six to ten years of age ; it is now from
six to twelve. The visitor to Japan usually under-estimates
the ages of children because they are so small. Japanese
boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.

In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000,
there were, I learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary
schools with 36 branch schools, 3 secondary schools and 17
winter schools. Within the same area there were 46
Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125 Shinto
shrines with 11 priests.

The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned
that, out of 71 charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded
with. When charges were not proceeded with it was
either because restitution had been made or the chief
constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the
offender with a reprimand. When transgressors are dis-
missed with a reprimand an eye is kept on them for a
year. As the Japanese are in considerable awe of their
police, I have no doubt that, as was explained to me, those
who have lapsed into evil-doing, but are released from
custody with a warning, may "tremble and correct
their conduct." In the whole county in a year 14,400
admonitions were given at 14 police stations. The

' Only last year ( 1921) another schoolmaster lost his life in an endeavour
to save the Emperor's portrait from hia burning school.

114 TO THE HILLS

noteworthy thing in the criminal statistics is the small
proportion of crime against women and children.

The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan
may be held, perhaps, to accomit for the fact that there
were in it, I was assured, only 14 geisha and 8 women
known to be of immoral character. All of them were living
in the town and they were said to be chiefly patronised by
commercial travellers and imported labourers. I was told
that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young
men and young women. Two undoubted authorities in
the district agreed that they could not answer for the
chastity of any young men before marriage or of " as many
as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save
the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes
register illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves
and their wives. Or when an unmarried girl is about to
have a chUd her father may call the neighbours to a feast
and annoxmce to them the marriage of his daughter to her
lover. The figures for illegitimate births are vitiated by
the fact that in Japan children are recorded as illegitimate
who are born to people who have omitted to register their
otherwise respectable unions.^

In the county in which I was travelling I was assured
that half the still births might be put down to immoral
relations and half to imperfect nourishment or overworking
of the mother. In this district girls marry from 17 or 18,
men from 18 to 30.

The town was full of country people who had come to
see the festival. One feature of it was the performance of
plays on four ancient wheeled stages of a simplicity in
construction that would have delighted William Poel.
Formerly these plays were given by the local youths ;
now professional actors are employed. The different acts
of the historical dramas which were performed were divided
into half a dozen scenes, and when one of these scenes had
been enacted the stage was wheeled farther along the street.
At the conclusion of each scene some three dozen small
boys, all wearing the white-and-black speckled cotton
kimono and German caps which are the common wear of
» See Appendix XXXVI.

ACTING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 115

lads throughout Japan, would swarm up on the stage, and,
with fans waved downwards, would yell at the pitch of their
voices an ancient jingle, which seemed to signify " Push,
push, push and go on ! " This was addressed to a score or
so of young men who with loud shouts hauled the heavy
stage-wagon along the street. The performances on the
four moving theatres went on simultaneously and some-
times the cars passed one another. The performances were
given on the eve and on the day and through the night of
the festival. The acting was amazingly good, considering
the July heat and the cramped conditions in which the
actors worked. Happy boys sat at the back of the scenes
fanning the players. Our kindly and voluble landlady was
not satisfied with the number of times the stages stopped
before her inn. She loudly threatened the youths who
were dragging them that she would reclaim some properties
she had lent and tell her dead husband of their ingratitude !

At one of the booths which had been opened for the
festival by a strolling company there were women actors,
contrary to the convention of the Japanese stage on which
men enact female rSles and in doing so use a special falsetto.
Some of these actresses performed men's parts. At every
performance in a Japanese theatre, as I have already men-
tioned, a policeman is provided with a chair on a special
platform, or in an otherwise favourable position, so that he
can view and if necessary censor what is going on. The
constable at this particular play was kind enough to offer
me his seat. The rest of the audience was content with
the floor. The poor little company of players brought to
their work both ability and an artistic conscience, but they
had to do everything in the rudest way. They were in no
way embarrassed by the attendants frequently trimming the
inferior oil lamps on the stage. A little girl on the floor,
entranced by the performance on the stage, or curious
about some detail of it, ran forward and laid her chin on the
boards and studied the actors at leisure. The folk in the front
row of the gallery dangled their naked legs for coolness.

One of my friends asked me how we managed in the West
to identify the people who wanted to leave the theatre
between the acts. I explained that as our performances

116 TO THE HILLS

did not last from early afternoon until nearly midnight it
was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre until the play
was over. At a Japanese playhouse, however, a portion
of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage
of the proceedings and return later. The careful manager
of a small theatre identifies these patrons by impressing a
small stamp on the palms of their hands.

From the theatre we went to the travelling shows. They
charged 2 sen. We were shown a mermaid, peepshows, a
snake, an imhappy bear, three doleful monkeys and some
stuffed animals which may or may not have had in life an im-
common number of legs. There was a barefaced imposture
by a young and pretty show-woman who insisted that two
marmots in her lap were the offspring of a girl. " Look,"
she cried, " at two sisters, the daughters of one mother. See
their hands ! " And she held up their paws. She rounded
off the fraud by feeding the creatures with condensed milk.

As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes
I noticed that I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled
policeman who carried a paper lantern. Although, as I
have explained, the stage plays given in the street were
continued all night, only one arrest was made. The
prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine
seller but described himself as a journalist. I went to see
the clean wooden cell where topers are confined until they
are sober. It had a very low door, so that culprits might
be compelled to enter and leave humbly on their knees.

We had begmi our festival day at six in the morning by
attending a celebration at the Shinto shrine. " Although
it is no longer necessary, perhaps, to attend the ceremony
in a special kind of geta" said our landlady, " it would be
as well if you observed the old rule not to attend without
taking a bath in the early morning." '

At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was
to attend the annual function had assembled in ceremonial
costumes. One man wore his hair tied up in the fashion
of the old prints. The plaintive strains of old instruments

1 A hot bath is ordinarily obtainable only in the afternoon and evening
in most Japanese hotels. In the morning people are content merely with
rinsing their hands and face.

"CONTAGION OF FOREIGNERS" 117

made the strange appeal of all folk music. A decorous
procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine.
Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables,
fish and sak6. These were received by the chief priest.
He carefully placed a strip of cloth before his mouth and
nose ' and addressed the chief deity, all heads being bowed.
Then the priest placed the offerings in the darkened interior
of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in all the
proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran
freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent
smiles. When an end had been made of offering food and
drink the priest within the shrine read a second message to
the deity. Again all heads were bowed. His thin voice
was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a child's
cry, the twittering of birds and the wind rustling the
cryptomeria, dark against the blue of the hills.

After the ceremony the food and drink which had been
brought by the people were consumed by the priests and the
country folk in a large room of the chief priest's house. We
were given ceremonial saM to which rice had been added and
as mementoes little cakes and dried fish. Not so long ago the
presence of a foreigner would have been imwelcome at such
a ceremony as we had witnessed : the fear of " contagion of
foreigners " extended even to people from another prefecture.
To-day the amiable priest placed in our hands for a few
moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.

Before the festival the priest had observed certain
taboos for eight days. He had avoided meeting persons
in mourning and his food had been cooked at a specially
prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch other
persons, particularly women ; he had bathed several times
daily in cold water and he had said many prayers. The
heads of the household in the commimity whose turn it was
to attend at the shrine were also supposed to have observed
some of the same taboos. Only those persons might make
offerings at the shrine whose fathers and motherswereliving.^

• In addressing a superior, many Japanese still draw in their breath
from time to time audibly.

' That is, persons ^ho might be considered not to have failed in their
filial duties.

118 TO THE HILLS

Formerly portions of the offerings of rice and saM at
the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.

In this district, when we discussed the influences which
made for moral or non-material improvement, everyone
put the school first. Then came home training. In this
part of the world the Buddhist priest was too often
indifferent ; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One
person well qualified to express an opinion said that a
" wise and benevolent " chief constable could exercise a
good moral influence. Others believed in public opinion.
A policeman said, " The first thing is for people to have
food and clothes ; without such primary satisfaction it
is very difficult to expect them to be moral." In consider-
ing the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is
not without interest to remember that a chief of police and
the head of a school receive about the same salary. Assist-
ant teachers and plain constables are also on an equality.
I found the salary of the administrative head of one county,
the guncho, to be only 2,000 yen a year.

I was told that in the prefecture we were passing through
there were no fewer than 860 co-operative societies. The
credit branches had a capital of two million yen ; the
purchase and sale branches showed a turnover of three
million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a tempera-
ture for the rice or to floods which drown the crop,
co-operation had! proved its value. The prefectures north
of Tokyo facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine,
for near Sendai the warm current from the south turns
oft towards America. I was told that the number of per-
sons who actually die as the result of famine has been
" exaggerated." The number in 1905 was " not more than
a hundred." These unfortunates were infants " and infirm
people who suffered from lack of suitable nourishment."
Every year the development of railway and steam communi-
cations makes easier the task of relieving famine sufferers.'
In the old days people were often found dead who had money
but were unable to get food for it. As Japan is a long
island with varying climates there is never general scarcity.

^ Alter the failure of the 1918-19 crop in India, 600,000 persons were in
receipt of famine relief.

CHAPTER XIII

the dwellers in the hills
(fukushima)

I didn't visit this place in the hope of seeing fine prospects — my study
is man. — ^Bobbow

Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who
turned his tenants' rent rice into sake. He was of the fifth
generation of brewers. He said that in his childhood
drunken men often lay about the street ; now, he said,
drunken men were only to be seen on festival days.

There had been a remarkable development in the trade
in flavoured aerated waters, " lemonade " and " cider
champagne " chiefly. I found these beverages on sale in
the remotest places, for the Japanese have the knack of
tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes
them easily transportable. The new lager beers, which are
advertised everywhere, have also affected the consumption
of saki} SakS is usually compared with sherry. It is
drunk mulled. At a banquet, lasting five or six hours or
longer, a man " strong in saki " may conceivably drink
ten go (a go is about one-third of a pint) before achieving
drunkenness, but most people would be affected by three go.
Some of the topers who boast of the quantity of saki they
can consume — I have heard of men declaring that they could
drink twenty go — are cheated late in the evening by the
waiting-maids. The Uttle sake bottles are opaque, and it is
easy to remove them for refilling before they are quite
empty.

The brewer, who was a firm adherent of the Jishu sect
of Buddhists, was accustomed to burn incense with his
family at the domestic shrine every morning. But this was

1 See Appendix XXXVII.
10 "9

120 THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

not the habit of all the adherents of his denomination. As
to the moral advancement of the neighbourhood, his grand-
father " tried veryearnestlyto improve the district bymeans
of religion, but without result." He himself attached
most value to education and after that to young men's
associations.

As we left the town we passed a " woman priest " who
was walking to Nikko, eighty miles away. Portraits of
dead people, entrusted to her by their relatives for convey-
ance to distant shrines, were hung round her body.

As the route became more and more hilly I realised how
accurate is that representation of hills in Japanese art
which seems odd before one has been in Japan : the land-
scape stands out as if seen in a flash of lightning.

Three things by the way were arresting : the number
of shrines, mostly dedicated to the fox god ; the rice
suspended round the farm buildings or drying on racks ;
and the masses of evening primroses, called in Japan
" moon-seeing flowers."

A feature of every village was one or more barred wooden
sheds containing fire-extinguishing apparatus, often pro-
vided and worked by the young men's association. Some-
times a piece of ground was described to me as " the train-
ing ground of the fire defenders." The night patrols of the
village were young fellows chosen in turn by the constable
from the fire-prevention parties, made up by the youths of
the village. There stood up in every village a high perpen-
dicular ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to
give the alarm. The emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with
white paper streamers attached, was sometimes dis-
tinguished by a yellow paper streamer awarded by the
prefecture.

On a sweltering July day it was difficult to realise that
the villages we passed through, now half hidden in foliage,
might be under 7 ft. of snow in winter. In travelling in
this hillier region one has an extra kurumaya, who pushes
behind or acts as brakeman.

At the " place of the seven peaks " we found a stone
dedicated to the worship of the stars which form the
Plough. Again and again I noticed shrines which had

THE ONCOMING OF THE WEST 121

before them two tall trees, one larger than the other, called
" man and wife." It was explained to me that " there
cannot be a more sacred place than where husband and wife
stand together." A small tract of cr j^tomeria on the lower
slopes of a hill belonged to the school. The children had
planted it in honour of the marriage of the Emperor when
he was Crown Prince.

Often the burial-grounds, the stones of which are seldom
more than about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow
strips of roadside waste. (The coffin is commonly square,
and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so often
assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be
rice fields in every spot where rice fields could possibly be
made.

On approaching a village the traveller is flattered by
receiving the bows of small girls and boys who range them-
selves in threes and fours to perform their act of courtesy.
I was told that the children are taught at school to bow to
foreigners, I remember that in the remoter villages of
Holland the stranger also received the bows of young people.

On the house of the headman of one village were displayed
charms for protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We
spoke of weather signs, and he quoted a proverb, " Never
rely on the glory of the morning or on the smile of your
mother-in-law."

We had before us a week's travel by huruma. Otherwise
we should have liked to have brought away specimens of
the wooden utensils of some of the villages. The travelUng
woodworker whom we often encountered) — he has to travel
about in order to reach new sources of wood supply — has
been despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told
that there was a special deity to look after him. In the
town we had left there was delightful woodwork, but most
of the draper's stuff was pitiful trash made after what
was supposed to be foreign fashions. I may also mention
the large collection of blood-and-thunder stories upon
Western models which were piled up in the stationers'
shops.

As we walked up into the hills — the kuruma men were
sent by an easier route — we passed plenty of sweet chest-

122 THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

nuts and saw large masses of blue single hydrangea and
white and pink spirea. We came on the ruined huts of
those who had burnt a bit of hillside and taken from it a
few crops of buckwheat. The charred trunks of trees
stood up among the green undergrowth that had invaded
the patches. There was a great deal of plantain and a
kurumaya mentioned that sometimes when children found
a dead frog they buried it in leaves of that plant. Japanese
children are also in the habit of angling for frogs with a
piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and are
jerked ashore.

We took our lunch on a hill top. It had been a stiff
climb and we marvelled at the expense to which a poor
county must be put for the maintenance of roads which so
often hang on cliff sides or span torrents. The great piles
of wood accumulated at the summit turned the talk to
" silent trade." In " silent trade " people on one side of
a hill traded with people on the other side without meeting.
The products were taken to the hill top and left there,
usually in a rough shed built to protect the goods from rain.
The exchange might be on the principle of barter or of cash
payment. But the amount of goods given in exchange or
the cash payment made was left to honour. " Silent
trade " still continues in certain parts of Japan. Sometimes
the price expected for goods is written up in the shed.
" Silent trade" originated because of fears of infectious
disease ; it survives because it is more convenient for one
who has goods to sell or to buy to travel up and down one
side of a mountain than up and down two sides.

As we proceeded on our way we were once more struck
by the extraordinary wealth of wood. Here is a country
where every household is burning wood and charcoal daily,
a country where not only the houses but most of the things
in common use are made of wood ; and there seems to be
no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that
in many parts there has been and is improvident use of
wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas
and wise planting make progress. But for many square
miles of hillside I saw there is no fitting word but jungle.

At the small ramshackle hot-spring inns of the remote

"THE DEVIL WAS ONCE EIGHTEEN" 128

hills the guests are mostly country folk. Many of them
carefully bring their own rice and miso, and are put up at a
cost of about 10 sen a day. In the passage ways one finds
rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood ash in the centre
of which charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.

We were in a region where there is snow from the middle
of November to the middle of April. For two-thirds of
December and January the snow is never less than 2 ft.
deep. The attendance of the children at one school during
the winter was 95 per cent, for boys and 90 per cent, for
girls. (See note, p. 112.)

My kurumaya pointed to a mountain top where, he said,
there were nearly three acres of beautiful flowers. The
rice fields in the hills were suffering from lack of water and
a deputation of villagers had gone ten miles into the
mountains to pray for rain. It is wonderful at what alti-
tudes rice fields are contrived. I noted some at 2,500 ft.
In looking down from a place where the cliff road hung
out over the river that flowed a hundred feet below I
noticed a stone image lying on its back in the water. It
may have come there by accident, but the ducking of such
a figure in order to procure rain is not unknown.

At an inn I asked one of the greybeards who courteously
visited us if there would be much competition for his seat
when he retired from the village assembly. He thought
that there would be several candidates. In the town from
which we had set out on our journey through the highlands
a doctor had spent 500 yen in trsdng to get on the assembly.

The tea at this resting place was poor and someone
quoted the proverb, " Even the devil was once eighteen
and bad tea has its tolerable first cup." On going to the
village office I found that for a population of 2,000 there
were, in addition to the village shrine, sixteen other shrines
and three Buddhist temples. Against fire there were four
fire pumps and 155 " fire defenders." A dozen of the
yoimg men of the village were serving in the army, four
were home on furlough, six were invalided and forty were
of the reserve. As many as thirty-seven had medals. The
doctors were two in number and the midwives three.
There was a sanitary committee of twenty-three members .

124 THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

The revenue of the village was 5,740 yen. It had a fund of
740 yen " against time of famine." The taxes paid were
2,330 yen for State tax, 2,460 yen for prefectural tax and
4,350 yen for village tax. The village possessed two co-
operative societies, a young men's association, a Buddhist
yoimg men's association, a Buddhist young women's
association, a society for the development of knowledge,
a society of the graduates of the primary school, two
thrift organisations, a society for "promoting knowledge
and virtue," and an association the members of which
"aimed at becoming distinguished." There were in the
village ninety subscribers to the Red Cross and two dozen
members of the national Patriotic Women's Association.

In the county through which we were moving there was
gold, silver and copper mining.^ Out of its population of
36,000 only 632 were entitled to vote for an M.P.

We rested at a school where the motto was, " Even in
this good reign I pray because I wish to make our country
more glorious." There were portraits of four deceased local
celebrities and of Peter the Great, Franklin, Lincoln,
Commander Perry and Bismarck. Illustrated waU charts
showed how to sit on a school seat, how to identify
poisonous plants and how to conform to the requirements
of etiquette. The following admonitions were also dis-
played— a copy of them is given to each child, who is ex-
pected to read the twelve counsels every morning before
coming to school :

1. — ^Do your own work and don't rely on others to do it.

2. — Be ardent when you learn or play.

3. — Endeavour to do away with your bad habits and

cultivate good ones.
4. — ^Never tell a lie and be careful when you speak.
5. — ^Do what you think right in your heart and at the

same time have good manners.
6. — Overcome difficulties and never hold back from

hard work.
7. — Do not make appointments which you are vmcertain

to keep.
8. — Do not carelessly lend or borrow.
1 See Appendix XXXVIII.

WESTERN "DECENCY" 125

9. — Do not pass by another's difficulties and do not

give another much trouble.
10. — Be careful about things belonging to the public as

well as about things belonging to yourself.
11. — Keep the outside and inside of the school clean and

also take care of waste paper.
12. — Never play with a grumbling spirit.

There was stuck on the roofs of many houses a rod with
a piece of white paper attached, a charm against fire. One
house so provided was next door to the fire station. Fre-
quently we passed a children's jizo or Buddha, comically
decked in the hat and miscellaneous garments of youngsters
whose grateful mothers believed them to have been cured
by the power of the deity.

Speaking of clothes, it was the hottest July weather and
the natural garment was at most a loin cloth. The women
wore a piece of red or coloured cotton from their waist to
their knees. The backs of the men and women who were
working in the open were protected by a flapping ricestraw
mat or by an armful of green stuff. The boys under ten or
so were naked and so were many little girls. But the
influence of the Westernising period ideas of what was
" decent " in the presence of foreigners survives. So,
whenever a policeman was near, people of all ages were to
be seen huddling on their kimonos. I was sorry for a merry
group of boys and girls aged 12 or 13 who in that torrid
weather ' were bathing at an ideal spot in the river and
suddenly caught sight of a policeman. It is deplorable
that a consciousness of nakedness should be cultivated when
nakedness is natural, traditional and hygienic. (Even in
the schools the girls are taught to make their kimonos
meet at the neck — with a pin ! ' — much higher than they
used to be worn.) It is only fair to bear in mind, however,
that some hurrying on of clothes by villagers is done out
of respect to the passing superior, before whom it is impolite

1 In Tokyo one may sleep night after night in summer with no covering
but the thinnest loose cotton kimono and have an electric fan going within
the mosquito curtain, and still feel the heat.

3 The kimono has no button, hook, tie, or fastening of any kind, and
is kept in place by the waist string and obi.

126 THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

to appear without permission half dressed or wearing other
than the usual clothing.

At a hot spring we found many patrons because, as I
was told, " Ox-day is very suitable for bathing." The old
pre-Meiji days of the week were twelve : Rat-, Ox-, Tiger-,
Hare-, Dragon-, Snake-, Horse-, Sheep-, Monkey-, Fowl-,
Dog- and Boar-day. When the Western seven days of the
week were adopted they were rendered into Japanese as :
Sun, Moon, Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth, followed
by the word meaning star or planet and day. For instance,
Sunday is Nichi (Sun) yo (star) bi (day), and Monday,
Getsu (Moon) yo (planet) bi (day), or Nichi-yo-bi and
Getsu-yo-bi. For brevity the bi is often dropped off.

The headman of a village we passed through told me
that the occasion of my coming was the first on which
English had been heard in those parts. Talking about the
people of his village, he said that there had been four
divorces in the year. Once in four or five years a child was
born within a few months of marriage. In the whole
county there had been among 310 young men examined
for the army only four cases of " disgraceful disease."
There was no immoral woman in the 75-miles-long valley.
Elsewhere in the county many yoimg men were in debt,
but in the headman's vUlage no youth was without a savings-
bank book. And the local men-folk " did not use women's
savings as in some places."

One shrine we passed seemed to be dedicated to the moon.
Another was intended to propitiate the horsefly. Several
villages had boxes fastened on posts for the reception of
broken glass. As we approached one village I saw an
inscription put up by the young men's association, " Good
Crops and Prosperity to the Village." When we came to
the next village the schoolmaster was responsible for an
inscription, " Peace to the World and Safety to the State."
In other places I foimd young men's society notice boards
giving information about the area of land in a village, how
it was cropped, the kind of crops, the area of forest, lists
of famous places, etc.

In the gorges we rode over many suspension bridges
and crossed the backbone of Japan in unforgettable scenes

TENAITT FAKMERS' HOIWES, p. 379

AUTHOR AT THE " SriRIT MEETING." p. 3G

SOME rERFOEMBES AT THE "SPIRIT MBETIKG." p. 36

1127

EIGHTY MILES FROM A MARKET 127

of romantic beauty. From the craggy paths of our high-
lands, amid a wealth not only of gorgeous flowers and
greenery but of great velvety butterflies, we saw the far-off
snow-clad Japanese Alps.

At one of the schools where we lunched I noticed that
the large wall maps were of Siam and Malaya, Borneo,
Australia and China (two). The portraits were of Florence
Nightingale, Lincoln, Napoleon and Christ as the Good
Shepherd, the last named being " a present from a believer
friend of the schoolmaster." ' This school closed at noon
from July 10 to July 31, and had twenty days' vacation in
August and another twenty days in the rice-planting and
busy sericultural season. The sewing-room of the school
was used in winter as a dormitory for boys who lived at a
distance. Accommodation for girls was provided in the
village. The children brought their rice with them. The
products of the school farm were also eaten by the boarding
pupils. It was estimated that the cost of maintaining the
girls was 10 sen a day. Three-fourths of this expense was
borne by the village. The regularity and strictness of the
dormitory management were found to have an excellent
effect. At the winter school, an adjunct of the day school,
there was an attendance of a score of youths and sixty
girls.

Speaking of a place where we stayed for the night, one
who had a wide knowledge of rural Japan said that he did
not think that there was a lonelier spot where farming was
carried on. There was no market or fair for 80 or 90 miles
and the little groups of houses were 2 or 3 miles apart. In
this district, it was explained, " the rich are not so rich
and the poor are not so poor."

We passed somewhere a fine shrine for the welfare of
horses. At a certain festival hundreds of horses are driven
down there to gallop round and round the sacred buildings.
Thousands of people attend this festival, but it was declared
that no one was ever hurt by the horses.

The poetical names of country inns would make an inter-

1 It is an illustration of the difficulty of using a foreign symbolism that
it is unlikely that a single child in the school had ever seen a shepherd or
a sheep.

128 THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

esting collection. I remember that it was at " the inn of
cold spring water " that the waiting-maid had never seen
cow's milk. She proved to be the daughter of the host
and wore a gold ring by way of marking the fact. This
girl told us that on the banks of the river there was only
one house in 70 miles. The village was having the usual
holiday to celebrate the end of the toilsome sericultural
season.

On our way to the next village we met two far-travelled
young women selling the dried seaweed which, in many
varieties, figures in the Japanese dietary.^ (There are shops
which sell nothing but prepared seaweeds.) A notice board
there informed us that the road was maintained at the cost
of the local young men's society. As we were on foot we
felt grateful, for the road was well kept. We passed for
miles over planking hung on the cliff side or on roadway
carried on embankments. On the suspended pathways
there was now and then a plank loose or broken, and there
was no rail between the pedestrian and the torrent dashing
below. Where there was embanked roadway it was almost
always uphill and downhill and it frequently swung sharply
round the corner of a cliff. As the river increased in
volume we saw many rafts of timber shooting the rapids.
At one place twenty-six raftsmen had been drowned. The
remnants of two bridges showed the force of the floods.

In this region the kurumaya were hard put to it at times
and once a kuruma broke down. Its owner cheerfully
detached its broken axle and went off with it at a trot ten
miles or so to a blacksmith. Later he traversed the ten
miles once more to refit his kuruma, afterwards coming on
fifteen more miles to our inn. The endurance and cheeri-
ness of the kurumaya were surprising. It was usually in
face of their protests that we got out to ease them while
going uphill. Every morning they wanted to arrange to
go farther than we thought reasonable. Each man had
not only his passenger but his passenger's heavy bag. One
day we did thirty-six miles over rough roads. The kuru-
maya proposed to cover fifty. They showed spirit, good
nature and loyalty. The character of their conversation

1 In 1918 the value of seaweed was returned at 13,600,000 yen.

"KURUMAYA" MANNERS 129

is worth mentioning. At one point they were discussing
the plays we had witnessed, at other times the scenery,
local legends, the best routes and the crops, material con-
dition and disposition of the villagers. Our kurumaya
compared very favourably indeed with men of an equal
social class at home. Their manners were perfect. They
stayed at the same inns as we did — once in the next room —
and behaved admirably. Every evening the men washed
their white cotton shorts and jackets — ^their whole costume
except for a wide-brimmed sun hat and straw waraji. Tied
to the axle of each kuruma were several pairs of waraji, for
on the rough hill roads this simple form of footgear soon
wears out. Discarded waraji are to be seen on every
roadside in Japan.

The inscriptions on some of the wayside stones we passed
had been written by priests so ignorant that the wording
was either ridiculous or almost without meaning. But there
was no difficulty in deciphering an inscription on a stone
which declared that it had been erected by a company of
Buddhists who claimed to have repeated the holy name of
Amida 2,000,000 times. (The idea is that salvation may
be obtained by the repetition of the phrase Namu Amida
Butsu.) A small stone set up on a rock in the middle of
paddy fields intimated that at that spot " people gathered
to see the moon one night every month." A third stone was
dedicated to the monkey as the messenger of a certain
god, just as the fox is regarded as the messenger of Inari.

We saw during our journey large numbers of kiri
(Paulownia) used for making geta and bride's chests. Some
farmers seem to plant kiri trees at the birth of a daughter
so as to have wood for her wedding chest or money for her
outfit.^ Kiri seems to be increasingly grown. On the other
hand in the same districts lacquer trees were now seldom
planted. The farmers complained that they were cheated
by the collectors of lacquer who come round to cut the
trees. The age of cutting was given me as the eighth or
ninth year, but poor farmers sometimes allowed a yoimg

1 In fifteen years a kiri tree may be about 20 ft. high and 3 ft. in cir-
cumference and be worth 30 yen. Kiri trees to the value of 3 million yen
were felled in 1918.

130 THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS

tree to be cut. A tree may be cut once a year for three or
four years. After that it is useless even for fuel, owing to
the smell it gives off, and is often left standing. The old
scarred trunks, sometimes headless, suggested the tattooed
faces and bodies of Maori veterans. As lacquer is poisonous
to the skin the wood calls for careful handling. I saw one
of the itinerant lacquer collectors, his hands wrapped in
cotton, operating on a tree.

During a particularly hot run we had the good fortune
to come on a soda-water spring from which we all drank
freely. A factory erected to tap the spring was in ruins.
Evidently the cost of carriage was prohibitive.

In these hills the rice was planted farther apart than is
usual so that the sun might warm the water. Here as
elsewhere daikon were hung up to dry on walls and trees,
and looked like giant tallow candles. Below a bridge,
which marked the village boundary, flags had been flung
down by way of keeping oft epidemics. Evil spirits were
warded oft by special dances.

The porch of a little tea-house where we rested was
covered with grapes. Soon after leaving it we reached our
destination for the night, a small town of houses of several
storeys which clustered on a hillside under the shadow of
a Zen temple. Meat and eggs were forbidden to the town,
but as the residents were all Zen Buddhists the restriction
was no hardship. There was no cow in the place, but
condensed milk was allowed. A man at the inn told me
that he knew of ten Shinto shrines which forbade the use
of chickens and eggs in their localities. The view from the
temple, perched high on its rock above the wide riverway,
was exceptionally fine. Parties of boys and girls of thirteen
paid visits to this temple " because thirteen is known as
a perilous age." The people of the vegetarian town,
instead of feeding on the fish in the river, fed them. I saw
a shoal of fish being given scraps at the water edge.

As we went on our way and spoke of the bad roads it
was suggested that in the old days roads were purposely
left uphill and downhill in order that the advance of
enemies might be hindered. We came to a dilapidated
tea-house kept by an ugly old woman who showed a touch-

" DA-DA-DA-BANG " 181

ing fondness for a cat and a dog. From her shack we had
a view of a volcano which had destroyed two villages a
few years before. Our hostess, who made much of us, said
that the catastrophe had been preceded by " horrible
da-da-da-bang " sounds and lightnings, and that it was
accompanied by " thunderbolts and heavy thick smoke."
The old woman had beheld " soil boiling and cracking."

Along our route we had more evidences of " fire farm-
ing." The procedure was to sow buckwheat the first year
and rape and millet the second year. In the cryptomeria
forests there was a variety which, when cut, sprouts from
the ground and makes a new growth like an elm. One
crop we saw was ginseng, protected by low structures
covered by matting.

At length we heard the distant sound of a locomotive
whistle. We were approaching the newly opened railway
which was to take us the short run to the sea. Soon we
were in a rather unkempt village which had hardly recovered
from its surprise at finding that it had a railway station.
We paid our kurumaya the sum contracted for and some-
thing over for their faithful service and for their long return
run, and having exchanged bows and cordial greetings, we
left for a time the glorified perambulators which a foreign
missionary is supposed to have introduced half a century
ago. (The Japanese claim the honour of " inventing " the
jinrikisha.)

CHAPTER XIV

shrines and poetry
(niigata and toyama)

Sir, I am talking of the mass of the people. — Johnson

The railway made its way through snow stockades and
through many tunnels which pierced cryptomeria-clad
hills. Eventually we descended to the wonderful Kambara
plains, a sea of emerald rice. Fourteen million bushels of
rice are produced on the flats of Niigata prefecture, which
grows more rice than any other. The rice, grown under
800 different names, is officially graded into half a dozen
quahties. The problem of the high country we had come
from was how to keep its paddy fields from drying up ; the
problem of Niigata is chiefly to keep the water in its fields
at a sufficiently low level. Almost every available square
yard of the prefecture is paddy.

At Gosen there were depressing-looking weaving sheds,
but the Black Country created by the oil fields farther on
was in even more striking contrast with the beautiful
region we had left. The petroleum yield was 65 million
gallons, and the smell of the oil went with us to the capital
city.

Niigata has a dark reputation for exporting farmers'
daughters to other parts of Japan, but I have also heard
that the percentage of attendance made by the children
at the primary schools of the prefecture is higher than any-
where else. Like Amsterdam, Niigata is a city of bridges.
There must be 200 of them. The big timber bridge across
the estuary is nearly half a mile long. One finds in Niigata
a Manchester-like spirit of business enterprise. Our hotel
was excellent.

Because they speak with all sorts of people and hear a

132

AT THE VILLAGE ASSEMBLY 133

great deal of conversation the blind amma are full of inter-
esting gossip. A clever amma who ran his knuckles up and
down my back said that farm land a good way from
Niigata was sold at from 200 yen to 300 yen and sometimes
at 400 yen per quarter acre.' Prefectural officials who called
on me explained that drainage operations on a large scale
were being completed. The water of which the low land
was relieved would be used to extend farming in the hills.
An effort was also being made to develop stock-keeping in
the uplands. It was proposed " to supply every farmer
with a scheme for increasing his live stock." The optim-
istic authorities were particularly attracted by the notion
of keeping sheep. The plan was to arrange for co-operation
in hill pasturing and in wool and meat production.
Mutton was as yet unknown, however, in Niigata. (The
mutton eaten by foreigners in Japan usually comes from
Shanghai.)

I went into the country to a little place where the natural
gas from the soil was used by the farmers for lighting and
cooking. I heard talk in this village and in others of the
influence of the local army reservists' society. ' ' Young men
on returning from their army service are always influential.
They are much respected by the youths and are talkative
indeed in the village assembly."

As our host was the village headman he kindly brought
the assembly together to meet me. I asked the assembled
fathers about two stones erected in the village. Somebody
had kindled a fire of rice screenings near one of them and
it had been scorched. On the other stone a kimono had
been hung to dry. The explanation was that the stones
were monuments not shrines, and that the people who had
set them up had left the district. The stones were no doubt
respected while the donors lived. It was not uncommon
for a pilgrim to a shrine to erect a memorial on his return
home.

In this viUage fifty Shinto shrines of the fifth class had
been closed under the influence of the Home Office. They
were shrines which had no offering from the village to

> For prices of land, see Appendix LIV.

134 SHRINES AND POETRY

support them. They had only a few worshippers. All
the remaining shrines were of the fifth class but one, and it
was of the fourth class. In the county there was a second-
class shrine and in the whole prefecture there were two or
three first-class shrines. The villagers had agreed among
themselves which of their own shrines should be made an
end of. A shrine which was dispensed with was burnt.
The stone steps approaching it were also removed. Burn-
ing was not sacrilege but purification. On the closing of a
shrine there might be complaints on the part of some old
man or woman, but the majority of people approved.
One Shinto shrine guardian lived at the fourth-class
shrine and conducted a ceremony at the sixteen fifth-class
shrines. Of the twenty Buddhist temples in the village
(300 families cultivating an average of a cho apiece), twelve
were Hokke, five Shingon, two Shinshu and one Zen. All
the priests were married.*

I have used the phrase " Buddhist temple " loosely and
may do so again, for it conveys an idea which " Buddhist
church " does not. A temple {do) is properly an edifice
in which a Buddha is enshrined. This building is not for
services or burial ceremonies or anniversary offerings for
departed souls. It may or may not have a guardian
(domori). He is never a priest with a shaven head. A
Buddhist church (tera) is a place where adherents go as
anniversaries come roimd or for sermons. It possesses a
priest. There is a considerable difference in the style of
Buddhist edifices according to their denomination — Zen
buildings are particularly plain — but all are more elaborate
than Shinto shrines.

A large Shinto shrine is called yashiro (house of god) ; a
small one hokora. A hokora is transportable. Originally
it was and in some places it still is a perishable wooden
shrine thatched with reed or grass straw which is renewed
at the spring and autumn festivals. It may be less than two
feet high and may be made of stone or wood. But it cannot
be regarded as a building. Inside there are gohei (upright

1 There are about 116,000 Shinto shrines of all grades and 14,000 priests,
and 71,000 temples and 51,000 priests. There are about a dozen Shinto
sects and about thirty Buddhist sects and sub-sects.

"A MIXING IN THE HEART" 185

sticks with paper streamers). In a rich man's house a
hokora may be seven or eight feet high or bigger than the
smallest yashiro, and may be embellished with colour and
metal. '

Returning to Buddhism, if a priest has a son he may be
succeeded by him. But many Buddhist priests marry late
and have no children. Or their children do not want to
be priests. So the priest adopts a successor. Sometimes
he maintains an orphan as acolyte or coadjutor. During
the day this assistant goes to school. In the evenings and
during holidays he is taught to become a priest. When the
primary-school education is finished the lad may be sent
by his patron, if he is well enough off, to a school of his sect
at Kyoto or Tokyo.

My travelling companion spoke of the infiltration of
new ideas in town and country. " A mixing is taking place
in the heart and head of everybody who is not a bigot.
But I don't know that some kinds of Christianity are to do
much for us. I heard the other day of a Japanese Presby-
terian who was preaching with zest about hell fire. Gener-
ally speaking, our old men are looking to the past and our
young men are aspiring, but not all. Some are content if
they can live uncriticised by their neighbours. When
they become old they may begin to think of a future life
and visit temples. But as young men their thoughts are
fully occupied by things of this world."

In the office of the headman whom I mentioned a page
or so back, there was behind his chair a kakemono which
read, " Reflecting and Examining One's Inner Spirit."
We passed a night in the old house of this headman, who was
a poet and a coimtry gentleman of a delightful type. Being
an eldest son he had married young, and his relations with
his eldest boy, a frank and clever lad, were pleasant to see.
The garden, instead of being shut in by a wall with a tiled
coping or by a palisade of bamboo stems in the ordinary
way, was open towards the rice fields, a scene of restful
beauty. As our kuruma drew near the house, the steward
appeared, a broom in his hand. Running for a short
distance before us imtil we entered the courtyard, he sym-
bolically swept the ground according to old custom.
11

136 SHRINES AND POETRY

After a delightful hot bath and an elaborate supper, which
my fellow traveller afterwards assured me had meant a
week's work for the women of the household — snapping
turtle and choice bamboo shoots were among the honour-
able dishes — we gathered at the open side of the room
overlooking the garden. Fireflies glowed in the paddies
and in the garden two stone lanterns had been lighted.
One of them, which had a crescent-shaped opening cut
in it, gleamed like the moon ; the other, which had a
small serrated opening, represented a star.

I paid a visit to the local agricultural co-operative store
which did business under the motto, " Faith is the Mother
of all Virtue." More than half the money taken at the
store was for artificial manures. Next came purchases of
imported rice, for, like the Danish peasants who export
their butter and eat margarine, the local peasants sold
their own rice and bought the Saigon variety. The society
sold in a year a considerable quantity of sdki. Stretched
over the doorway of the building in which the goods of the
society were stored were the rope and paper streamers
which are seen before Shiato shriaes and consecrated
places. The society had a large flag post for weather
signals, a white flag for a fine day, a red one for cloudy
weather and a blue one for rain.

I brought away from this village a calendar of agri-
cultural operations with poems or mottoes for each month,
in the collection of which I suspect the poet had a
hand :

January : Future of the day determined in the morning.

February : The voice of one reading a farming book coming
from the snow- covered window.

March : Grafting these young trees, thinking of the days
of my grandchildren.

April : Digging the soil of the paddy field, sincerity con-
centrated on the edge of the mattock.

May: Returning home with the dim moonlight glinting
on the edges of our mattocks.

June : Boundless wealth stored up by gracious heaven :
dig it out with your mattock, take it away with your
sickle.

THE RAIN DELEGATE 137

July : Weeding the paddy field * in a happiness and con-
tentment which townspeople do not know.

August : Standing peasant worthier than resting rich man.

September : Ears of rice bend their heads as they ripen.
(An allusion to wisdom and meekness.)

October : White steam coming out of a manure house on
an autumn morning.

November : Moon clear and bright above neatly divided
paddy fields.

December : All the members of the family smiling and
celebrating the year's end, piling up many bales of rice.

In this district I first noticed cotton. It is sown in June
and is picked from time to time between early September
and early November. Cotton has been grown for centuries
in Japan, but nowadays it is produced for household weaving
only, the needs of the factories being met by foreign im-
ports. The plant has a beautiful yellow flower with a
dark brown eye.

In one village I asked how many people smoked. The
answer was 60 per cent, of the men and 10 per cent, of
the women. In the same village, which did not seem par-
ticularly well off, I was told that 200 daily papers might
be taken among 1,300 families. Eighty per cent, of the
local papers were dailies and cost 35 sen a month. Tokyo
papers cost 45 or 50 sen a month.

I visited a school, half of which was in a building adjoin-
ing a temple and half in the temple itself. In the same
county there were two other schools housed in temples.
The small Shinto shrine in this temple held the Imperial
Rescript on education. On one side of it was an ugly
American clock and on the other a thermometer. In the
temple (Zen) two Tokyo University students were staying
in ideal conditions for vacation study.

I saw at one place a very tired, imslept-looklng peasant
with a small closed tub carried over his shoulder by means
of a pole. On the tub was tied a white streamer, such as
is supplied at a Shinto shrine, and a branch of sdkdki
{Eurya ochnacea, the sacred tree). The traveller was

' It is done by wading in leech-infested water under a burning sun
and pulling out the weeds by hand and pushing them down into the sludge.

138 SHRINES AND POETRY

the delegate of his village. He had been to a mountain
shrine in the next prefecture and the tiib held the water he
had got there. The idea is that if he succeeds in making
the journey home without stopping anywhere his efforts
will result in rain coming down at his village. If he should
stop at any place to rest or sleep, and there should be the
slightest drip from his tub there, then the rain will be pro-
cured not for his own village but for the community in
which he has tarried. So our voyager had walked not
only for a whole day but through the night. I heard of a
rain delegate who had stamina enough to keep walking for
three or four days without sleeping.

Another way of obtaining rain has principally to do with
tugging at a rock with a straw rope. Then there is the
plan already referred to of tying straw ropes to a stone
image and flinging it into the river, saying, " If you don't
give us rain you will stay there ; if you do give us rain you
shall come out." There is also the method of paying
someone liberally to throw the split open head of an ox
into the deep pool of a waterfall. " Then the water god
being much angry," said my informant, " he send his
dragon to that village, so storm and rain come necessarily."
Yet another plan is for the villagers simply to ascend to a
particular moimtain top crying, " Give us rain ! Give us
rain ! " While dealing with these magic arts I may
reproduce the following rendering of a printed " fortune "
which I received from a rural shrine : " Wish to agree but
now somewhat difficult. Wait patiently for a while. Do
nothing wrong. Wait for the spring to come. Everything
will be completed and will become better. Endeavouring
to accomplish it soon will be fruitless."

It was a student of agricultural conditions in Toyama
who gossiped to me of the large expenditure by farmers of
that prefecture on the marriage of their daughters. " It
is not so costly as the boys' education and it procures a good
reception for the girl from father- and mother-in-law. The
pinch comes when there is a second and third daughter, for
the average balance in hand of a peasant proprietor in this
prefecture at the end of the year is only 48 yen. Borrowing
is necessary and I heard of one bankruptcy. The Governor

A NEW LIGHT ON DOWRIES 139

tried to stop the custom but it is too old. They say Toyama
people spend more proportionately than the people in other
prefectures. In general they do not keep a horse or ox. I
heard of young farmers stealing each other's crops. Parents
are very severe upon a daughter who becomes ill-famed,
for when they seek a husband for her they must spend more.
So mostly daughters keep their purity before marriage.
But I know parts of Japan where a large number of the
girls have ceased to be virtuous. Concerning the priests,
those of Toyama are the worst. A peasant proprietor
with seven of a family and a balance at the end of the year
of 100 yen must pay 30 to 40 yen to the temple. Some
priests threaten the farmer, sajong that if he does not pay
as much as is imposed on him by the collector an inferior
Buddha will go past his door. Priests want to keep farmers
foolish as long as they can."

CHAPTER XV

THE nun's cell

(nagano)

It is one more incitement to a man to do well. — Boswell

EightV per cent, of Nagano is slope. Hence its dependence
on sericulture. The low stone-strewn roofs of the houses,
the railway snow shelters and the zig-zag track which the
train takes, hint at the clintiatic conditions in winter time.
Despite the snow — ski-ing has been practised for some years
— the summer climate of Nagano has been compared with
that of Champagne and there is one vineyard of 60,000
vines.

I was invited to join a circle of administrators who were
discussing rural morality and rehgion. One man said
that there was not 20 per cent, of the villages in which
the priests were " active for social development." Another
speaker of experience declared that " the four pillars of
an agriculttiral village " were " the soncho (headman),
the schoolmaster, the policeman and the most influential
villager." He went on : "In Europe religion does many
things for the support and development of morality, but
we look to education, for it aims not at only developing
intelligence and giving knowledge, but at teaching
virtue and honesty. But there is something beyond that.
Thousands of our soldiers died willingly in the Russian war.
There must have been something at the bottom of their
hearts. That something is a certain sentiment which
penetrates deeply the characters of our countrymen.
Our morality and customs have it in their foundations.
This spirit is Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit). It ap-
peared among our warriors as bushido (the way of the
soldier), but it is not the monopoly of soldiers. Every

140

"HALF-CIVILISED" EUROPE 141

Japanese has some of this spirit. It is the moral backbone
of Japan."

" I should like to say," another speaker declared, " that
I read naany European and American books, but I remain
Japanese. Mr. Uchimura sees the darkest side of Buddh-
ism and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn expected too much from it.
' So mysterious,' Hearn said, but it is not so mysterious to
us. We must be grateful to him for seeing something of
the essence of our life. Sometimes, however, we may be
ashamed of his beautifying sentences. I am a modern man,
but I am not ashamed when my wife is with child to pray
that it may be healthy and wise. It is possible for us
Japanese to worship some god somewhere wTtEout knowing
why. TKe poet says, ' I do not know the reason of it, but .
tears fall down from my eyes m reverence and gratitude.'
I suppose this is natural theology. The proverb says,
' Even the head of a sardine is something if believed ig,.'
I attach more importance to a man's attitudeTo something
higher than himself than to the thing which is revered by_
him. Whether a man goes to Nara and Kyoto or to a
Roman Catholic or a Methodist church he can come home
very purified in heart."

" Some foreigners have thought well to call us ' half
civilised,' " the speaker went on. " Can it be that
uncivilised is something distasteful to or not understood by
Europeans and Americans ? We have the ambition to
erect some system of Eastern civilisation. It is possible
that we may have it in our minds to call some things in
Europe ' half civilised.' Surely the barbarians are usually
the people other than ourselves. When the townsman
goes to the country he says the people are savages. But
the countryman finds his fellow-savages quite decent
people."

" Some time ago," broke in a professor, " I read a
novel by Ren6 Bazin and I could not but think how much
ahke were our peasants and the peasants of the West."

The previous speaker resumed : " The other day a
foreigner laughed in my presence at our old art of incense
burning and actually said that we were deficient in the sense
of smell. I told him that fifty years ago our samurai

142 THE NUN'S CELL

class, in excusing their anti-foreign manifestations, said they
could not endure the smell of foreigners, and that to this
day our peasants may be heard to say of Western people,
' They smell ; they smell of butter and fat. ' "

In the city of Nagano early in the morning I went to a
large Buddhist temple where the authorities had kindly
given me special facilities to see the treasures — alas ! all in
a wooden structure. A strange thing was the preservation
untouched of the room in which the Emperor Meiji rested
thirty years ago. May oblivion be one day granted to
that awful chenille table cover and those appalling chairs
which outrage the beautiful woodwork and the golden
tatami of a great building ! At the entrance of the temple
priests in a kind of open office were reading the newspaper,
playing go or smoking. More pleasing was the sight of
matting spread right round the temple below its eaves, in
order that weary pilgrims might sleep there, and the spec-
tacle of travel-stained women tranquilly sleeping or suckling
their infants before the shrine itself. There is a pitch dark
underground passage below the floor round the founda-
tions of the great Buddha, and if the circuit be made and
the lock communicating with the entrance door to the
sacred figure be fortunately touched on the way, paradise,
peasants believe, is assured. I made the circuit a few
moments after an old woman and found the lock, and on
returning to the temple with the rustic dame knelt with
her before the shrine as the curtain which veils the big
Buddha was withdrawn. The face of one wooden figure
in the temple had been worn, like that of many another in
Japan, with the stroking that it had received from the ailing
faithful.

I had the privilege of visiting the adjoining nunnery. As
I was specially favoured by a general admission, I asked to
be permitted to see some nuns' cells. They showed a
Buddhist advance on Western ideas. The word " cells "
was a misnomer for beautiful little flower-adorned rooms
of a cheerful Japanese house. The fragile, wistful nun
who was so kind as to speak with me had a consecrated
expression. Her dress was white, and over it was brocade
in a perfect combination of green and cream. Her head

I.X A BUDDHIST XUXtXERT. iJ.lJi;

GBASS-OUTTISCi TOOLS OOMPAKED WITH A "VVESTBBX SCYTHE, p. 307

U3]

THE CHILD -OOLLBCTOES OF VILLAGERS" SAYISaS. r- 230

NUXS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A " CELL " BY THE AUTHOR, p. 142

STUDENTS' STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL, p. 50

[143

"SLAVES OF THEIR HUSBANDS" 143

was shaven ; her hands, which continually told her beads,
were hidden. Religious services are conducted and sermons
are delivered here and in other nunneries by the nuns
themselves. I could not but be sorry for some girl children
who had become nuns on their relatives' or guardians'
decision. Adult newcomers are given a month in which,
if they wish, they may repent them of their vows ; but
what of the children ? The head of this nunnery was a
member of the Imperial family. The institution, like the
temple from which I had just come, stores thousands of
wooden tablets to the memory of the dead. There are
many little receptacles in which the hair, the teeth or
the photographs of believers are preserved. I found that
both at the nunnery and the temple a practical interest
was being shown in the reformation of ex-criminals.

While in the highlands of Nagano I spent a night at
Karuizawa, a hill resort at which tired missionaries and their
families, not only from all parts of Japan but from China,
gather in the sununer months beyond the reach of the
mosquito." I stayed in the summer cottage of my travel-
ling companion's brother-in-law. The family consisted of
a reserved, cultivated man with a pretty wife of what I
have heard a foreigner call " the maternal, domestic type."
In their owlishness newcomers to the country are inchned to
commiserate all Japanese housewives as the " slaves of
their husbands." They would have been sadly wrong in
such thoughts about this happy wife and mother. The
eldest boy, a wholesome-looking lad, had just passed
through the middle school on his way to the university,
and spoke to me in simple English with that air of responsi-
bility which the eldest son so soon acquires in Japan. His
brothers and sisters enjoyed a happy relation with him
and with each other. The whole family was merry,
unselfish and, in the best sense of the word, educated.
As we knelt on our zabuton we refreshed ourselves with tea
and the fine view of the active volcano, Asama, and chatted

» Although, as has been seen, the rural problems under investigation
in this book are inextricably bound up with religion, limits of space make
it necessary to reserve for another volume the consideration of the large
and complex question of missionary work.

144 THE NUN'S CELL

on schools, holidays, books, the country and religion.
After a while, a little to my surprise, the mother in her sweet
voice gravely said that if I would not mind at all she would
like very much to ask me two questions. The first was,
" Are the people who go to the Christian church here all
Christians ? " and the second, " Are Christians as affec-
tionate as Japanese ? "

Karuizawa, which is full of ill-nourished, scabby-headed,
" bubbly-nosed " ^ Japanese children, is an impoverished
place on one of the ancient highways. We took ourselves
along the road until we reached at a slightly higher altitude
the decayed village of Oiwake. When the railway came
near it finished the work of desolation which the cessation
of the daimyos' progresses to Yedo (now Tokyo) had begun
half a century ago. In the days of the Shogun three-
quarters of the 300 houses were inns. Now two-thirds of
the houses have become uninhabitable, or have been sold,
taken down and rebuilt elsewhere. The Shinto shrines are
neglected and some are unroofed, the Zen temple is im-
poverished, the school is comfortless and a thousand tomb-
stones in the ancient burying ground among the trees are
half hidden in moss and undergrowth.

The farm rents now charged in Oiwake had not been
changed for thirty, forty or fifty years. In the old inn there
was a Shinto shrine, about 12 ft. long by nearly 2 ft. deep,
with latticed sliding doors. It contained a dusty collection
of charms and memorials dating back for generations.
Outside in the garden at the spring I found an irregular
row of half a dozen rather dejected-looking little stone
hokora about a foot high. Some had faded gohei thrust
into them, but from the others the clipped paper strips had
blown away. At the foot of the garden I discovered a
somewhat elaborate wooden shrine in a dilapidated state.
" Few country people," someone said to me, " know who
is enshrined at such a place." It is generally thought that
these shrines are dedicated to the fox. But the foxes are

1 As to the "bubbly-nosed oallant," to quote the description given of
young Smollett, nasal unpleasantness seems to be popularly regarded as
a sign of health. The constant sight of it is one of the minor discomforts
of travel.

THE RETURNED TEN SEN 145

merely the messengers of the shrine, as is shown by the
figures of crouching or squatting foxes at either side. A
well-known professor lately arrived at the conviction that
the god worshipped at such shrines is the god of agri-
culture. He went so far as to recommend the faculty of
agriculture at Tokyo university to have a shrine erected
within its waUs to this divinity, but the suggestion was not
adopted.

In the course of another chat with the old host of the inn
he referred to the time, close on half a century ago, when
3,000 hungry peasants marched through the district
demanding rice. They did no harm. " They were satisfied
when they were given food ; the peasants at that time were
heavily oppressed." To-day the people round about look
as if they were oppressed by the ghosts of old-time tjnrants.
But there is " something that doth linger " of self-respect.
When we left on our way to Tokyo I gave the man who
brought our bags a mile in a barrow to the station 40 sen.
He returned 10 sen, saying that 30 sen was enough.

IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE^
CHAPTER XVI

PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE
(SAITAMA, GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANASHi)

A foreigner who comes among us without prejudice may speak his
mind freely. — Goldsmith

I WENT back to Nagano to visit the silk industrial regions.
My route lay through the prefectures of Saitama and
Gumma. I left Tokyo on the last day of June. Many
farmers were threshing their barley. On the dry- land
patches, where the grain crop had been harvested, soya
bean, sown between the rows of grain long before harvest,
was becoming bushier now that it was no longer over-
shadowed. Maize in most places was about a foot high,
but where it had been sown early was already twice that
height. The sweet potato had been planted out from its
nursery bed for weeks. Here and there were small crops of
tea which had been severely picked for its second crop. I
noticed melons, cucumbers and squashes, and patches of
the serviceable burdock. Many paddy farmers had water
areas devoted to lotus, but the big floating leaves were not
yet illumined by the mysterious beauty of the honey-
scented flowers.

In order to imagine the scene on the rice flats, the reader
must not think of the glistering paddy fields ' as stretching
in an unbroken monotonous series over the plain.
Occasionally a rocky patch, outcropping from the paddy
tract, made a little island of wood. Sometimes it was a

1 The three leading silk prefectures are in order : Nagano, Fukushima
and Gumma.

2 At this time of the year, when the rice plants are small, the water in
the paddies is still conspicuous.

146

A POINT FOR VEGETARIANS 147

sacred grove in which one caught a glimpse of a Shinto
shrine or the head stones of the dead. Sometimes there
was a little clump of cropped tree greenery which kept a
farmhouse cool in summer and, at another time of the
year, sheltered from the wind. Few householders were too
poor or too busy to be without their little patch of flowers.

Before the train climbed out of the Kwanto plain
temperature of not far below 100° F. the planting of rice
seemed to be almost an enviable occupation. The peasant
had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat, sometimes an
armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious
feeling of being up to the knees in water or mud on a hot
day — one recalled the mud baths of the West — when the
alternative was walking on a dusty road, digging on the
sun-baked upland or perspiring in a house or the train.

With the rise in the level a few mulberries began to
appear and gradually they occupied a large part of the
holdings. Sometimes the mulberries were cultivated as
shoots from a stump a little above ground level, and
sometimes as a kind of small standard. As mulberry,
culture increased, the silk factories' whitewashed cocoon
stores and the tall red and black iron chimneys of the
factories themselves became more numerous. It is a pity
that the silk factory is not always so innocent-looking
inside as the pure white exterior of its stores might suggest.
It is certain that the overworked girl operatives, sitting
at their steaming basins, drawing the silk from the soaked
cocoons, were glad to find the weather conditions such that
they could have the sides of their reeling sheds removed.

At many of the railway stations there were stacks of
large, round, flat bean cakes, for the farmer feeds his " cake "
to his fields direct, not through the medium of cattle.
Although a paddy receives less agreeable nutritive materials
than bean cake, the extensive use of this cake must be com-
forting to a little school of rural reformers in the West.
These ardent vegetarians have refused to hsten to the
allegation that vegetarianism was impossible because
without meat-eating there would be no cattle and there-
fore no nitrogen for the fields.

It was not only the bean cakes at the stations which

148 PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

caught my attention but the extensive use of lime. Square
miles of paddy field were white with powdered lime,
scattered before the planting of the rice, an operation which
in the higher altitudes would not be finished until well on
in July.

A contented and prosperous countryside was no doubt
the impression reflected to many passengers in the train
that sunny day. But I knew how closely pressed the
farmers had been by the rise in prices of many things that
they had got into the way of needing. I had learnt, too,
the part that superstition ' as well as simple faith played in
the lives of the country folk. When, however, I pondered
the way in which the rural districts had been increasingly
invaded by factories run under the commercial sanctions
of our eighteen- forties, I asked myself whether there might
not be superstitions of the economic world as well as of
religious and social life.

I heard a Japanese speak of being well treated at inns in
the old days for 20 sen a night. It should be remembered,
however, that there is a system not only of tipping inn ser-
vants but of tipping the inn. The gift to the inn is called
chadai and guests are expected to offer a sum which has
some relation to their position and means and the food and
treatment they expect. I have stayed at inns where I
have paid as much chadai as bill. To pay 50 per cent, of
the bill as chadai is common. The idea behind chadai is
that the inn-keeper charges only his out-of-pocket expenses
and that therefore the guest naturally desires to requite
him. In acknowledgment of chadai the inn-keeper brings
a gift to the guest at his departure — fans, pottery, towels,
picture postcards, fruit or slabs of stiff acidulated fruit
jelly (in one inn of grapes and in another of plums) laid
between strips of maize leaf. The right time to give
chadai is on entering the hotel, after the " welcome tea."
In handing money to any person in Japan, except a porter
or a hurumaya, the cash or notes are wrapped in paper.

On the journey from the city of Nagano to Matsumoto,
wonderful views were unfolded of terraced rice fields, and,

1 An old Japan hand once counselled me that " the thing to find out
in sociological enquiries is not people's religions but their superstitions."

"OUR MORALS ARE NOT SO BAD" 149

above these, of terraced fields of mulberry. How many-
hundred feet high the terraces rose as the train climbed the
hills I do not know, but I have had no more vivid impression
of the triumphs of agricultural hydraulic engineering. We
were seven minutes in passing through one tunnel at a high
elevation.

I spoke in the train with a man who had a dozen cho
under grapes, 20 per cent, being European varieties and 80
per cent. American. He said that some of the people in
his district were " very poor." Some farmers had made
money in sericulture too quickly for it to do them good.
He volunteered the opinion, in contrast with the statement
made to me during oiir journey to Niigata, that the people
of the plains were morally superior to the people of the
mountains. The reason he gave was that " there are many
recreations in the plains whereas in the mountains there is
only one." In most of the mountain villages he knew three-
quarters of the young men had relations with women,
mostly with the girls of the village or the adjoining village.
He would not make the same charge against more than
ten per cent, of the young men of the plains, and "it is
after all with teahouse girls." He thought that there
were " too many temples and too many sects, so the priests
are starved."

An itinerant agricultural instructor in sericulture who
joined in our conversation was not much concerned by the
plight of the priests. " The causes of goodness in our
people," he said, " are family tradition and home training.
Candidly, we believe our morals are not so bad on the whole.
We are now putting most stress on economic development.
How to maintain their families is the question that troubles
people most. With that question unsolved it is preaching
to a horse to preach morality. We can always find high
ideals and good leaders when economic conditions improve.
The development of morality is our final aim, but it is en-
couraged for six years at the primary school. The child
learns that if it does bad things it will be laughed at and
despised by the neighbours and scolded by its parents. We
are busy with the betterment of economic conditions and
questions about moraUty and religion puzzle us."

150 PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

When I reached Matsumoto I met a rural dignitary who
deplored the increasing tendency of city men to invest in
rural property. " Sometimes when a peasant sells his
land he sets up as a money-lender." I was told that nearly
every village had a sericultural co-operative association,
which bought manures, mulberry trees and silk- worm eggs,
dried cocoons and hatched eggs for its members and spent
money on the destruction of rats. Of recent years the
county agricultural association had given 5 yen per tan to
farmers who planted improved sorts of mulberry. About
half the farmers in the county had manure houses. Some
800 farmers in the county kept a labourer.

I went to see a guncho and read on his wall : " Do not
get angry. Work ! Do not be in a hurry, yet do not
be lazy." " These being my faults," he explained, " I
specially wrote them out." There was also on his wall a
kakemono reading : "At twenty I found that even a plain
householder may influence the future of his province ; at
thirty that he may influence the future of his nation ; at
forty that he may influence the future of the whole world."
Below this stirring sentiment was a portrait of the writer,
a samurai scholar, from a photograph taken with a camera
which he had made himself. He hved in the last period of
the Shogunate and studied Dutch books. He was killed by
an assassin at the instance, it was believed, of the Shogun.

One of the noteworthy things of Matsumoto was the
agricultural association's market. Another piece of organ-
isation in that part of the world was fourteen institutes
where girls were instructed in the work of silk factory hands.
The teachers' salaries were paid by the factories. So were
also the expenses of the silk experts of the local authorities.
On the day I left the city the daily paper contained an
announcement of lectures on hygiene to women on three
successive days, " the chief of police to be present." This
paper was demanding the exemption of students from the
bicycle tax, the rate of which varies in different pre-
fectures.

A young man was brought to see me who was special-
ising in musk melons. He said that the Japanese are
gradually getting out of their partiality for unripe fruit.

AN ENTERPRISING YOUNG MAN 151

On our way to the Suwas we saw many wretched dwell-
ings. The feature of the landscape was the silk factories'
tall iron chimneys, ordinarily black though sometimes
red, white or blue.

It is not commonly understood that Japanese lads by
the time they " graduate " from the middle school into
the higher school have had some elementary military train-
ing. A higher-school youth knows how to handle a rifle
and has fired twice at a target. At Kami Suwa the
problem of how middle-class boys should procure econom-
ical lodging while attending their classes had been solved
by self-help. An ex-scholar of twenty had managed to
borrow 4,000 yen and had proceeded to build on a hillside
a dormitory accommodating thirty-six boarders. Lads did
the work of levelling the ground and digging the well.
The frugal lines on which the lodging-house was conducted
by the lads themselves may be judged from the fact that
5 yen a month covered everything. Breakfast consisted
of jice, miso soup and pickles. Cooking and the emptying
of the benjo ' were done by the lads in turn. A kitchen
garden was run by common effort. Among the many
notices on the walls was one giving the names of the resi-
dents who showed up at 5 o'clock in the morning for a cold
bath and fencing. I also saw the following instruction
written, by the founder of the house, which is read aloud
every morning by each resident in turn :

Be independent and pure and strive to make your char-
acters more beautiful. Expand your thought. Help each
other to accomplish your ambitions. Be active and steady
and do not lose your self-control. Be faithful to friends and
righteous and polite. Be silent and keep order. Do not
be luxurious (sic). Keep everything clean. Pay attention
to sanitation. Do not neglect physical exercises. Be
diUgent and develop your intelligence.

The borrower of the 4,000 yen with which the institution
was built managed to pay it back within seven years
with interest, out of the subscriptions of residents and
ex-residents.

1 See Appendix IV.
12

152 PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

An agricultural authority whom I met spoke of " farming
families living from hand to mouth and their land slipping
into the possession of landlords " ; also of a fifth of the
peasants in the prefecture being tenants. A young novel-
ist who had been wandering about the Suwa district had
been impressed by the grim realities of life in poor farmers'
homes and cited facts on which he based a low view of rural
morality.

Suwa Lake lies more than 3,500 ft. above sea level and
in winter is covered with skaters. The country round
about is remarkable agriculturally for the fact that many
farmers are able to lead into their paddies not only warm
water from the hot springs but water from ammonia
springs, so economising considerably in their expenditure
on manure. A simple windmill for lifting the fertiUsing
water is sold for only 4 yen.

We went to Kofu, the capital of Yamanashi prefecture,
through many mountain tunnels and ravines. Entrancing
is the just word for this region in the vicinity of the Alps.
But joy in the beauty through which we passed is tinged
for the student of rural life by thoughts of the highlander's
difficulties in getting a living in spots where quiet streams
may become in a few hours ungovernable torrents. I
remember glimpses of grapes and persimmons, of parties of
middle-school boys tramping out their holiday — every inn
reduces its terms for them— and of half a dozen peasant
girls bathing in a shaded stream. But there were less
pleasing scenes : hills deforested and paddies wrecked by a
waste of stones and gravel flung over them in time of flood.
Here and there the indomitable farmers, counting on the
good behaviour of the river for a season or two, were
endeavouring, with enormous labour, to resume possession
of what had been their own. The spectacle illustrated at
once their spirit and their industry and their need of land.
At night we slept at Kofu at " the inn of greeting peaks."
In the morning a Governor with imagination told me of
the prefecture's gallant enterprises in afforestation and river
embanking at expenditures which were almost crippling.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRTH, BEIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WOKM

(NAGANO)

The mulberry leaf knoweth not that it shall be silk. — Arab proverb

One acre in every dozen in Japan produces mulberry leaves
for feeding the silk-worms which two million farming
families — more than a third of the farming families of
the country — painstakingly rear.

But the mulberry is not the only mark of a sericultural
district. Its mark may be seen in the tall chimneys of the
factories and in the structure of the farmers' houses.
Breeders of silk-worms are often well enough off to have
tiled instead of thatched roofs ; they have frequently two
storeys to their dwellings ; and they have almost always a
roof ventilator so that the vitiated air from the hibachi-
heated silk- worm chambers may be carried oft. Yet another
sign of sericulture being a part of the agricultural activities
of a district is its prosperity. Silk-worms produce the
most valuable of all Japanese exports, Japan sends
abroad more raw silk than any other country.'

It is in the middle of the country that sericulture chiefly
flourishes. The smallest output of raw silk is from the
most northerly prefecture and from the prefecture in the
extreme south-west of the mainland. But human aptitude
plays its part as well as climate. The Japanese hand is a
wonderful piece of mechanism — look at the hands of the
next Japanese you meet — and in sericulture its delicate
touch is used to the utmost advantage.

The gains of sericulture are not made without corre-
sponding sacrifices. Silk- worm raising is infinitely laborious.
The constant picking of leaves, the bringing of them home
and the chopping and supplying of these leaves to the

1 For statistics of serioultiire, see Appendix XXXIX.
153

154 BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF SILK- WORM

smallest of all live stock and the maintenance of a proper
temperature in the rearing-chamber day and night mean
unending work. The silk- worms may not be fed less than
four or five times in the day ; in their early life they are
fed seven or eight times. This is the feeding system for
spring caterpillars. Summer and autumn breeds must have
two or three more meals. The men and women who attend
to them, particularly the women, are worn out by the end
of the season. " The women have only three hours' rest
in the twenty-four hours," I remember someone saying.
" They never loose their obi."

When the caterpillars emerge from the tiny, pin-head-like
eggs of the silk- worm moth they are minute creatures.
Therefore the mulberry leaves are chopped very fine indeed.
They are chopped less and less fine as the silk- worms grow,
until finally whole leaves and leaves adhering to the shoots
are given. Some rearers are skilful enough to supply fi-om
the very beginning leaves or leaves still on the shoots.
The caterpillars live in bamboo trays or " beds " on racks.
In the house of one farmer I found caterpillars about three-
quarters of an inch long occupying fifteen trays. When
the silk-worms grew larger they would occupy two
hundred trays.

The eggs, when not produced on the farm, are bought
adhering to cards about a foot square. There are usually
marked on these cards twenty-eight circles about 2 ins.
in diameter. Each circle is covered with eggs. The eggs
come to be arranged in these convenient circles because, as
will be explained later on, the moths have been induced to
lay within bottomless round tins placed on the circles on
the cards. The eggs are sticky when laid and therefore
adhere. In a year 35,000,000 cards, containing about a
billion eggs, are produced on some 10,000 egg-raising farms.

The eggs— they are called " seed " — are hatched in the
spring (end of April — as soon as the first leaves of the
mulberry are available — to the middle of May), summer
(June and July) and autumn (August and October). It
takes from three to seven days — according to temperature
— for the " seed " to hatch, and from twenty to thirty-two
days — according to temperature — ^for the silk-worms to

THE WONDER OF BIRTH AND LIFE 155

reach maturity. Half the hatching is done in spring.
In one farmer's house I visited in the spring season I
found that he had hatched fifty cards of " seed." From
the birth of the caterpillars to the formation of cocoons
the casualties must be reckoned at ten per cent, daily.
Not more than eighty-five per cent, of the cocoons which
are produced are of good quality. The remainder are
misshapen or contain dead chrysalises. As there are
more than a thousand breeds of silk- worm, all cocoons are
not of the same shape and colour. Some are oval ; some
are shaped like a monkey nut. Most are white but some
are yellow and others yellow tinted.

In the whole world of stock raising there is nothing more
remarkable than the birth of silk- worm moths. The co-
coons on the racks in the farmer's loft are covered by sheets
of newspaper in which a number of round holes about three-
quarters of an inch in diameter have been cut. When the
moths emerge from their cocoons they seek these openings
towards the light and creep through to the upper side of the
newspaper. For newly born things they come up through
these openings with astonishing ardour. In body and wings
the moths are flour white. White garments are suitable
for the babe, the bride and the dead, and the moth perfected
in the cocoon is arrayed not only for its birth but for bridal
and death, which come upon it in swift succession. The
male as well as the female is in white and is distinguishable
by being somewhat smaller in size. On the newspaper the
few males who have not found partners are executing wild
dances, their wings whirring the while at a mad pace. When
from time to time they cease dancing they haimt the holes
in the paper through which the newly born moths emerge.
When a female appears a male instantly rushes towards her,
or rather the two creatures rush towards one another, and
they are at once locked in a fast embrace. Immediately
their wings cease to flutter, the only commotion on the news-
paper being made by the unmated males. In a hatching-
room these males on the stacks of trays are so numerous
that the place is filled with the sound of the whirring of
their wings. The down flies from their wings to such an
extent that one continually sneezes. The spectacle of the

156 BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF SILK-WORM

stacks of trays covered by these ecstatic moths is re-
markable, but still more remarkable is the thrilUng sense
of the power of the life-force in a supposedly low form of
consciousness.

The wonder of the scene is missed, no doubt, by most
of those who are habituated to it. From time to time
weary, stolid-looking girls or old women lift down the trays
and run their hands over them in order to pick up super-
fluous male moths. Sometimes the male moths are walking
about the newspaper, sometimes they are torn callously
from the embrace of their mates. The fate of the male
moths is to be flung into a basket where they stay until
the next day, when perhaps some of them may be mated
again. The novice is impressed not only by the ruthless-
ness of this treatment but by the way in which the whole
loft is littered by male moths which have fallen or have been
flung on the floor and are being trampled on.

The female moths, when their partners have been
removed, are taken downstairs in newspapers in order to
be put into the little tin receptacles where the eggs are to
be laid. On a tray there are spread out a number of egg
cards with, as before mentioned, twenty-eight printed circles
on each of them. On these circles are placed the twenty-
eight half-inch-high bottomless enclosures 6f tin. Some
one takes up a handful of moths and scatters them over the
tins. Some of the moths fall neatly into a tin apiece.
Others are helped into the little enclosures in which, to do
them credit, they are only too willing to take up their
quarters. The curious thing is the way in which each moth
settles down within her ring. Indeed from the moment
of her emergence from the cocoon until now she has never
used her wings to fly. Nor did the male moth seem to
wish to fly. The sexes concentrate their whole attention
on mating. After that the female thinks of nothing but
lajdng eggs. Almost immediately after she is placed within
her little tin she begins to deposit eggs, and within a few
hours the circle of the card is covered.

Food is given neither to the females nor to the males.
Those which are not kept in reserve for possible use on the
second day are flung out of doors. When the female moth

THE MOTH AND THE MICROSCOPE 157

has deposited her eggs she also is destroyed.' The shoji
of the breeding and egg-laying rooms permit only of a dif-
fused light. The discarded moths are cast out into the
brilliant sunshine where they are eaten by poultry or are
left to die and serve as manure.

Sericulture is always a risky business. There is first
the risk of a fall in prices. Just before I reached Japan
""prices were so low that many people despaired of being
able to continue the business, and shortly after I left there
was a crisis in the silk trade in which numbers of silk
factories failed. At the time I was last in a silk-worm
farmer's house cocoons were worth from 5 to 6 yen per kwan
of Sj lbs. From 8 to 10 kwan of cocoons could be expected
from a single egg card. Eggs were considered to be at a
high price when they were more than 2 yen per card. The
risks of the farmer are increased when he launches out and
buys mulberry leaves to supplement those produced on
his own land. Sometimes the price of leaves is so high
that farmers throw away some of their silk- worms. The
risks run by the man who grows mulberries beyond his own
leaf requirements on the chance of selling are also con-
siderable.

Beyond the risk of falling prices or of a short mulberry
crop there is in sericulture the risk of disease. One ad-
vantage of the system in which the eggs are laid in circles
on the cards instead of all over them is that if any disease
should be detected the affected areas can be easily cut out
with a knife and destroyed. Disease is so serious a matter
that silk-worm breeding, as contrasted with silk-worm
raising, is restricted to those who have obtained licences.
The silk-worm breeder is not only licensed. His silk-
worms, cocoons and mother moths are all in turn officially
examined. Breeding " seeds " were laid one year by
about 33,000,000 odd moths ; common " seeds " by about
948,000,000.

Of recent years enormous progress has been made in
combating disease. I have spoken of how a silk-worm
district may be recognised by the structure of the farm-

1 She is examined microsoopioally in order to make sure that she was
not affected by infectious disease.

158 BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF SILK-WORM

houses and the prosperity of the farmers, but another
striking sign of sericulture is the trays and mats lying in
the sun in front of farmers' dwellings or on the hot stones
of the river banks in order to get thoroughly purified from
germs. It is illustrative of the progress that has been
made under scientific influence, that whereas twenty years
ago a sericulturist would reckon on losing his silk-worm
harvest completely once in five years, such a loss is now
rare. Scientific instructors have their difficulties in Japan
as in the rural districts of other countries, but the people
respect authority, and they are accustomed to accept in-
struction given in the form of directions. Also the Japan-
ese have an unending interest in the new thing. Further,
there is a continual desire to excel for the national advantage
and in emulation of the foreigner. The advance in scientific
knowledge in the rural districts is remarkable, because it is
in such contrast with the primitive lives of the country
people. Picture the surprise of British or American
farmers were they brought face to face with thermometers,
electric light and a working knowledge of bacteriology
in the houses of peasants in breech clouts.

It was while I was trying to learn something of the seri-
cultural industry that I had the opportunity of visiting
a noteworthy institution. It is noteworthy, among other
reasons, because I seldom met a foreigner in Japan who
knew of its existence. It is the great Ueda Sericultural
College in the prefecture of Nagano. I was struck not only
by its extent but by its systematised efficiency. On a
level with the director's eyes was a motto in large lettering,
" Be diligent. Develop your virtues."

The Institute devotes itself to mulberries, silk- worms and
silk manufacture. There are 200 students, as many as it
will hold. The young men become teachers of sericulture,
advisers in mills and experts of co-operative sericultural
societies. The institution, in addition to the fees it
receives and its earnings from its own products, some
33,000 yen in all, has an annual Government subsidy of
about 114,000 yen. There are other sericultural colleges
doing similar work in Tokyo and Kyoto, and there is also
in the capital the Imperial Sericultural Experiment Station

T"EACHEBS or A VILLAGE School., p. Ik

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SBKIOULTUBAL SCHOOL STUDENTS, p. 158

SOIIE OF THE SILK FACTOHIES IS KA3IISUWA. p. 161

VILLiOE ASSBJIBLY-KOOM:. p. 1S3

[153

A NEW MEAT ESSENCE 159

(with a staff of 87), where I saw all sorts of research work
in progress. This experiment station has half a dozen
branches scattered up and down the silk districts.

At Ueda I went through corridors and rooms, sterilised
thrice a year, to visit professors engaged in a variety of
enquiries. One professor had turned into a kind of beef
tea the pupae thrown away when the cocoons are unwound ;
another had made from the residual oil two or three kinds
of soap. The usual thing at a silk factory is for the pupae,
which are exposed to view when the silk is unrolled from
the scalded cocoons, to lie about in horrid heaps until
they are sold as manure or carp food. The professor
declared that his product was equal to a third of the total
weight of the pupae utilised, and was sure that it could be
sold at a fifteenth of the price of Western beef essences.
The Director of the College had tried the product with his
breakfast for a fortnight and avowed that during the
experiment he was never so perky.

It was a pleasure to look into the well-kept dormitories
of the students, where there was evidence, in books, pictures
and athletic material, of a strenuous life. The young men
are made fit not only by judo, fencing, archery, tennis and
general athletics, but by being sent up the mountains on
Sundays. The men are kept so hard that at the open
fencing contest twice a year the visitors are usually beaten.
The director quoted to me Roosevelt's " Sweat and be
saved."

From men we went to machines and mulberries. I
inspected all sorts of hot chambers for killing cocoons.
I saw, in rooms draped in black velvet like the pictured
scenes at a beheading, silk testing for lustre and colour. I
gazed with respect on many kinds of winding and weaving
machinery. Then, going out into the experiment fields, I
strode through more varieties of mulberry than I had im-
agined to exist. There are supposed to be 500 sorts in the
country but many are no doubt duplicates. The varieties
differ so much in shape and texture of leaf that the novice
would not take some of them for mulberries.

It was held that it would not be difiicult to increase the
mulberry area in Japan by another quarter of a million

160 BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF SILK-WORM

acres. The yield of leaves might be raised by 3,300 lbs. per
acre if the right sort of bushes were always grown and the
right sort of treatment were given to them and to the soil.
As to the additional labour needed for an extended seri-
culture, the annual increase in the population of Japan
would provide it. I was told that' " the technics of seri-
culture are sure to improve." It would be easy to raise
the yield 2 kwan per egg card for the whole country.
Within a seven-year period the production of cocoons
per egg card had become 20 per cent, better. The talk was
of doubling the present yield of cocoons. The " proper
encouragement " needed for doubling the production of
cocoons was more technical instruction and more co-opera-
tive societies. There had been a continual rise in the
world's demand for silk and there was no need to fear
" artificial silk." " People who buy it often come to
appreciate natural silk." And I read in an official publica-
tion that " the climate of Japan is suitable for the cultiva-
tion of mulberry trees from south-west Formosa to
Hokkaido in the north."

CHAPTER XVIII

" GIRL COLLECTORS " AND FACTORIES
(NAGANO AND YAMANASHi)

At your return shew the truth. — ^Fboissart

I VISITED factories in more than one prefecture. At the
first factory — it employed about 1,000 girls and 200 men —
work began at 4.30 a.m., breakfast was at 5 and the next
meal at 10.30. The stoppages for eating were for a few
minutes only. A cake was handed to each girl at her
machine at 3. Suppertime came after work was finished
at 7.' No money was paid the first year. The second
year the wages might be 3 or 4 yen a month. The state-
ment was made that at the end of her five years' term a
girl might have 300 yen, but that this sum was not within
the reach of all.' The girls were driven at top speed by
a flag system in which one bay competed with another and
was paid according to its earnings. Owing to the heat the
flushed girls probably looked better in health than they
really were. They were fat in the face, but this could not
be regarded as an indication of their general well-being. It
was admitted that some girls left through illness. Em-
ployees returned to their homes for January and February,
when the factory was closed down ; there was also three
days' hohday in June. In the dormitory I noticed that

^ The times stated are those given to me in the factories. The question
of overtime is referred to later in the Chapter.

2 Again the reader must be reminded of the rise in wages and prices
(estimated on p. xxv). During the recent period of inflation, silk rose
to 3,000 yen per picul and fell to 1,300 or 1,400 yen. There have been
great fluctuations in the wages of factory girls. At the most flourishing
period as much as 25 yen per head was paid to recruiters of girls. In this
Chapter, however, it is best to record exactly what I saw and heard.

161

162 " GIRL COLLECTORS " AND FACTORIES

each girl had the space of one mat only (6 ft. by 3 ft.).
Twenty-two girls slept in each dormitory. The men con-
nected with this factory were low-looking and shifty-eyed.

An agricultural expert who was well acquainted with the
conditions of silk manufacture and of the district and was
in a disinterested position told me after my visit to this
factory how the foremen scoured the country for girl labour
during January and February. The success of the kemban
or girl collector was due to the poverty of the people, who
were glad " to be relieved of the cost of a daughter's food."
Occasionally the kemban had sub-agents. The mill pro-
prietors were in competition for skilled girls, and money
was given by a kemban intent on stealing another factory's
hand.

The novices had no contract. The contract of a skilled
girl provided that she should serve at the factory for a
specified period and that if she failed to do so, she should
pay back twenty times the 5 yen or whatever sum had been
advanced to her. Obviously 100 yen would be a prohibitive
sum for a peasant's daughter to find. The amount of
the workers' pay was not specified in the contract. The
document was plainly one-sided and would be regarded in
an Enghsh court as against public policy and unenforce-
able. Married women might take an infant with them
to the factory. In more than one factory I saw several
thin-faced babies.

The effect of factory life on girls, a man who knew the
countryside well told me, was " not good." The girls had
weakened constitutions as the result of their factory hfe and
when they married had fewer than the normal number of
children. The general result of factory life was degenera-
tion. The girls " corrupted their villages."

The custom was, I understood, that the girls were kept
on the factory premises except when they could allege
urgent business in town. But they were allowed out on
the three nights of the Bon festival. It was rare that
priests visited the factories and there were no shrines there.
The girls had sometimes " lessons " given them and oc-
casionally story-tellers or gramophone owners amused them.
The food supplied by some factories was not at all adequate

"THE SPOILING OF THEIR DAUGHTERS" 163

and the girls had to spend their money at the factory
tuck-shops, " Most proprietors," I was told, " endeavour
to make part of their staff permanent by acting as middle-
men to arrange marriages between female and male
workers." The infants of married workers were " looked
after by the youngest apprentices."

In another place I saw over a factory which employed
about 160 girls, who were worked from 5.30 a.m. to 6.40
p.m. with twenty minutes for each meal. If a girl " broke
her contract " it was the custom to send her name to other
factories so that she could not get work again. The
fotemen at this establishment seemed decent men.

One who had no financial interest in the silk industry but
knew the district in which this second factory stood said
that " many girls " came home in trouble. The peasants
did not like " the spoiling of their daughters," but were
" captured in their poverty by the idea of the money to
be gained." Undoubtedly the factory life was pictured in
glowing colours by the kemban.

In a third factory there were more than 200 girls and
only 15 men. The proprietor and manager seemed good
fellows. I was assured that it was forbidden for men
workers to enter the women's quarters, but on entering the
dormitory I came on a man and woman scuffling. The girls
of this factory and in others had running below their feet
an iron pipe which was filled with steam in cold weather.
On some days in July, the month in which I visited this
factory, I noticed from the temperature record sheet that
the heat had reached 94 degrees in the steamy spinning
bays, where, unless the weather be damp, it was impossible,
because of spinning conditions, to admit fresh air. I saw
a complaint box for the workers. As in other factories,
there was a certain provision of boiled water and ample
bathing accommodation. Hot baths were taken every night
in summer and every other night in winter. Here, as else-
where, though many of the girls were pale and anaemic, all
were clean in their persons, which is more than can be said
of all Western factory hands. Work began at 4 a.m. and
went on until 7 p.m. From 10 to 15 minutes were allowed
for meals. The winter hours were from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

164 "GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES

In this factory, as in others, there was a system of tallies,
showing to all the workers the ranking of the girls for pay-
ment. The standard wage seemed to be 20 sen a
day, and the average to which it was brought by good work
30 sen. There were thirty or more girls who had deduc-
tions from their 20 sen. Apprentices were shown as work-
ing at a loss. Once or twice a month a story-teller came to
entertain the girls and every fortnight a teacher gave them
instruction. When I asked if a priest came I was told that
" in this district the families are not so religious, so the
girls are not so pious." Two doctors visited the factory, one
of them daily. Counting all causes, 5 per cent, of the girls
returned home. The owner of the factory, a man in good
physical training and with an alert and kindly face, said
the industry succeeded in his district because the employers
" exerted themselves " and the girls " worked with the
devotion of soldiers." I thought of a motto written by the
Empress, which I had seen at Ueda, " It is my wish that
the girls whose service it is to spin silk shall be always
diligent." Behind the desk of this factory proprietor hung
the motto, " Cultivate virtues and be righteous."

The fourth factory I saw seemed to be staffed entirely
with apprentices who were turned over to other factories
in their third year. The girls appeared to have to sleep
three girls to two mats. In the event of fire the dormitory
would be a death-trap. I was told that there was an
entertainment or a " lecture on character " once a week.
The motto on the walls of this factory was, " Learning
right ways means loving mankind."

I went over the factory which belonged to the largest
concern in Japan and had 10,000 hands. The girls were
looked after in well- ventilated dormitories by ten old women
who slept during the day and kept watch at night. There
was a fire escape. All sorts of things were on sale at whole-
sale prices at the factory shop, but for any good reason an
exit ticket was given to town. The dining-room was ex-
cellent. There was a hospital in this factory and the nurse
in the dispensary summarised at my request the ailments
of the 35 girls who were lying down comfortably : stomachic,
12 ; colds, 7 ; fingers hurt by the hot water of the cocoon-

"THE GIRLS ARE IN BETTER CONDITION" 165

soaking basins, 5 ; female affections, 4 ; nervous, 2 ; eyes,
rheumatism, nose, lungs and kidneys, 1 each. The average
wages in this factory worked out at 60 yen for 9 months.
The hour of beginning work was 4.80 at the earliest. The
factory stopped at sunset, the latest hour being 6.80. I was
assured that of the girls who did not get married 70 per
cent, renewed their contracts. A large enclosed open space
was available in which the girls might stroll before going to
bed. The motto of the establishment was, " I hear the
voice of spring under the shadow of the trees." In reference
to the new factory legislation the manager said that the
hours of labour were so long that it would be some time
before 10 hours a day would be initiated. • This factory
and its branches were started thirty years ago by a man
who was originally a factory worker. Although now very
rich he had " always refused to be photographed and had
not availed himself of an opportunity of entering the
House of Peers."

I visited several factories the girls working at which did
not live in dormitories but outside. At a winding and
hanking factory which was airy and well lighted the hours
were from 6 to 6. At a factory where the hours were from
4.30 to 7 some reelers had been fined. Japanese Christian
pastors sometimes came to see the girls, and on the wall
of the recreation room there were paper gohei hung up
by a Shinto priest.

I got the impression that the girls in the factories at
Kofu in Yamanashi prefecture were not driven so hard
as those at the factories in the Suwas in Nagano. Someone
said : " However the Suwa people may exploit their girls,
we are able, working shorter hours and giving more enter-
tainments, to produce better silk, for the simple reason that
the girls are in better condition. We can get from 5 to 10
per cent, more for our silk." A factory manager said that
it would be better if the girls had a regular holiday once a
week, but one firm could not act alone. (The factories are

^ On the day on which I re-read this for the printers, I notice in an Ameri-
can paper that one of the largest employers of labour in the United States
has just stated that he did not see his way to abolish the twelve-houra'
day.

166 "GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES

working seven days a week, except for festival days and
public holidays.)

With regard to the kemhan, I was told in Yamanashi
that many girls went to the factories " unwillingly by the
instructions of their parents." It was also stated that the
money paid to girls or their parents on their engagement
was not properly a gratuity but an advance. I heard that
the police keep a special watch on kemban. They would
not do this without good reason.

CHAPTER XIX

" FBIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S " GRIM TALE

The psychology of behaviour teaches us that [a country's] failures
and semi-failures are likely to continue until there is a far more widespread
appreciation of the importance of studying the forces which govern
behaviour. — Saxby

I DO not think that some of the factory proprietors are
conscious that they are taking undue advantage of their
employees. These men are just average persons at the
ante-Shaftesbury stage of responsibility towards labour.'
Their case is that the girls are pitifully poor and that the
factories supply work at the ruling market rates for the
work of the pitifully poor. Said one factory owner to me
genially : " Peasant families are accustomed to work from
dayUght to dark. In the silk- worm feeding season they have
almost no time for sleep. Peasant people are trained to
long hours. Lazy people might suffer from the long hours
of the factory, but the factory girls are not lazy."

It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is all the
difference between a long day at the varied work of a farm,
even in the trying silk-worm season, and a long day, for
nine or ten months on end, sitting still, with the briefest

1 It is a chastening exercise to read before proceeding with this Chapter
an extract from Spencer Walpole's History of England, vol. iii, p. 317,
under the year 1832 : " The manufacturing industries of the country
were collected into a few centres. In one sense the persons employed
had their reward : the manufacturers gave them wages. In another
sense their change of occupation brought them nothing but evil. Forced
to dwell in a crowded alley, occupying at night a house constructed in
neglect of every known sanitary law, employed in the daytime in an un-
healthy atmosphere and frequently on a dangerous occupation, with no
education available for his children, with no reasonable recreation, with the
sky shrouded by the smoke of an adjoining capital, with the face of nature
hiddenjby a brick wall, neglected by an overworked clergyman, regarded
as a mere machine by an avaricious employer, the factory operative turned
to the public house, the prize ring or the cockpit."
13 167

168 "FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE

intervals for food, in the din and heat of a factory. Such a
life must be debiUtating. When it is added that in most
factories, in the short period between supper and sleep, and
again during the night, the girls are closely crowded, no
further explanation is wanted of the origin of the tuber-
culosis which is so prevalent in the villages which supply
factory labour.' There is no question that in the scanty
moments the girls do have for an airing most of them are
immured within the compounds of their factories. A large
proportion of the many thousands of factory girls ^ who are
to be mothers of a new generation in the villages are passing
years of their lives in conditions which are bad for them
physically and morally. It must not be forgotten that very
many of the girls go to the factories before they are fully
grown. On the question of morality, evidence from dis-
interested quarters left no doubt on my mind that the
morale of the girls was lowered by factory life. The
Lancashire factory girl goes home every evening and she
has her Saturday afternoon and her Sunday, her church or
chapel, her societies and clubs, her amusements and her
sweetheart. Her Japanese sister has none of this natural
life and she has infinitely worse conditions of labour.

It is only fair to remember, however, that the Japanese
factory girl comes from a distance. She has no relatives
or friends in the town in which she is working. But the
plea that she would get into trouble if she were allowed her
liberty without control of any sort does not excuse her
present treatment. If the factories offered decent con-
ditions of life not a few of the companies would get at their
doors most of the labour they need and many of the girls
woTxld live at home. If the factories insist on having cheap
rural labour then they should do their duty by it. The
girls should have reasonable working hours, proper sleeping
accommodation and proper opportunities inside and out-
side the factories for recreation and moral and mental im-
provement. It is idle to suggest that fair treatment of
this sort is impossible. It is perfectly possible.

1 See Appendix XL.

^ Number of factory workers, a million and a half, of whom 800,000
are females. For statistics of women workers, see Appendix XLI.

PROFIT AND NET PROFIT 169

The factory proprietors are no worse than many other
people intent on money making. But the silk industry,
as I saw it, was exploiting, consciously or unconsciously,
not only the poverty of its girl employees but their strength,
morality, deftness ' and remarkable school training in
earnestness and obedience. Several times I heard the un-
enlightened argument that, if there were a certain sacrifice
of health and well-being, a rapidly increasing population
made the sacrifice possible ; that, as silk was the most
valuable product in Japan, and it was imperative for the
development and security of the Empire that its economic
position should be strengthened, the sacrifice must be made.
Nothing need be said of such a hopelessly out-of-date and
nationally indefensible attitude except this : that it is
doubtful whether any considerable proportion of the people
connected with the silk industry have felt themselves
specially charged with a mission to strengthen the economic
condition of their country. They have simply availed
themselves of a favourable opportunity to make money.
That opportunity was presented by the cheap labour
available in farmers' daughters unprotected by effective
trade unions, by properly administered factory laws or by
public opinion.

II «

The enterprise, the efficiency and the profits shown by
the sericultural industry have been remarkable, and not a
few of the capitalists connected with it are personally
public-spirited. But many well-wishers of Japan, native-
born and foreign, cannot help wondering what is the real
as compared with the seeming return of the industry to a
nation the strength of which is in its reservoir of rustic
health and wiUingness. It is significant of the extent to
which the factories are working with cheap labour that,
in a country in which there are more men than women,'
there was in about 20,000 factories 58 per cent, of female
labour. If I stress the fact of female employment it is

1 The Minister of Commerce has himself stated that the serieioltural
industry is rooted in the dexterity of the Japanese oovmtiywoman.
3 This section of the Chapter was written in 1921.
» In Japan in 1918 there were, per 1,000, 505'2 men to 494-8 women.

170 "FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE

because in Japan nearly every woman eventually marries.
Enfeebled women must therefore hand on enfeeblement
to the next generation.'

The Japanese, in their present factory system, as in
other developments, insist on making for themselves all the
mistakes that we have made and are now ashamed of.
In judging the Japanese let us remember that all our in-
dustrial exploitation of women ' was not, as we like to
believe, an affair as far off as the opening nineteenth century.
I do not forget as a young man filling a newspaper poster
with the title of an article which recounted from my own
observation the woes of women chain makers who, with
bared breasts and their infants sprawling in the small coals,
slaved in domestic smithies for a pittance. And as I write
it is announced that the head of the United States Steel
Corporation says that " there is no necessity for trade
unions," which are, in his opinion, " inimical to the best
interests of the employers and the public." That is pre-
cisely the view of most Japanese factory proprietaries.

The trade union is not illegal in Japan, but its teeth have
been drawn (1) by the enactment that " those who, with
the object of causing a strike, seduce or incite others "
shall be sentenced to imprisonment from one to six months
with a fine of from 3 to 30 yen ; (2) by the power given to
the police (a) to detain suspected persons for a succession
of twenty-four hour periods, and (b) summarily to close
public meetings, and (3) by the franchise being so narrow
that few trade unionists have votes. During the six years
of the War there were as many as 141,000 strikers, but a not
uncommon method of these workers was merely to absent

1 Of the workers under the age of fifteen in the 20,000 factories, 82 per
cent, were girls. The statistics in this paragraph were issued by the
Ministry of Commerce in 1917.

2 For sketches of women and children (with a chain between their legs)
harnessed to coal wagons in the pits, see Parliamentary Papers, vol. xv,
1842. " There is a factory system grown up in England the most horrible
that imagination can conceive," wrote Sir William Napier to Lady
Heater Stanhope two years after Queen Victoria's accession. " They
are hells where hxindreds of children are killed yearly in protracted torture."
In Torrens's Memoirs of the Queen's First Prime Minister, one reads :
" Melbourne had a Bill drawn which with some difficulty he persuaded
the Cabinet to sanction, prohibiting the employment of children under
9 in any except silk mills."

"THE SONG OF REVOLUTION" 171

themselves from work, to refrain from working while in
the factory, or to " ca' canny." Nevertheless 638 of them
were arrested. When I attended in Tokyo a gathering of
members of the leading labour organisation in Japan it
was discreetly named Yu-ai-kai (Friend-Love-Society, i.e.
Friendly Society). Now it is boldly called the Con-
federation of Japanese Labour. A Socialist League '
and several labour publications exist. Workers assemble
to see moving pictures of labour demonstrations, and
a labour meeting has defied the police in attendance by
singing the whole of the '* Song of Revolution." But
crippled as the unions are under the law against strikes
and by the poverty of the workers, they find it difficult
to attain the financial strength 'necessary for effective
action. Many workers are trade unionists when they
are striking but their trade unionism lapses when the
strike is over, for then the unions seem to have small
reason for existing. The head of the Federation of Labour
lately announced that the number of trade unionists was
only 100,000, or half what it was during the recent big
strikes ; and it is doubtful whether, even including the
7,000 members of the Seamen's Union, there are in Japan
more than 50,000 contributing members of the different
unions. But this 50,000 may be regarded as staunch.

The poverty-stricken unions certainly afford no real
protection to the girl workers, who form indeed a very
small proportion of their members. And the Factory Law
does little for them. A Japanese friend who knows the
labour situation well writes to me :

" According to the Factory Law, which came into force in
the autumn of 1916, ' factory employers are not allowed
to let women work more than twelve hours in a day,'
(Article III, section 1.) But if necessary, ' the competent
Minister is entitled to extend this limitation to fourteen
hours.' (Section 2.) As to night work the law says that
' factory employers are not allowed to let women work
from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.' (Article IV.) If, however, there
are necessary reasons, ' the employers can be exempted
from the obligation of the Article IV.' (Article V.)

1 More than 200 books on Socialism were published in 1920.

172 "FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE

Article IX says that ' the employers are forbidden to let
women engage in dangerous work.' But whether work
is dangerous or not is determined by ' the competent
Minister ' (Article XI), who may or may not be well in-
formed. There is also Article XII, ' The competent Min-
ister can limit or prohibit the work of women about to have
children ' and within three weeks after confinement.
But anyone who enters factories may see women with pale
faces because they work too soon after their confinement.
" I cannot tell you how far these provisions are enforced.
I can only say that I have not yet heard of employers being
punished for violating the Factory Law. Can it be supposed
that employers are so honest as never to violate the Factory
Law ? As to working hours, in some factories they may
work less than fourteen hours as the law indicates. In
others they may work more, because " there are necessary
reasons." This is especially true of the factories in the
country parts. As 200 inspectors have been appointed, the
authorities must by now know the actual situation pretty
well."

Dr. Kuwata, a former member of the Upper House, with
whom I frequently discussed the labour situation, declares
the Factory Law to be " palpably imperfect and primitive."
At the end of 1917 there were, according to official figures,
99,000 female factory operatives under fifteen years of age
and 2,400 under twelve. Some 20,000 of these children
were employed in silk factories. What protection have
they ? Before passing this page for the press I have shown
it to a well-informed Japanese friend and he says that he
has never seen any newspaper report of a prosecution under
the Factory Law. Obviously a Factory Law under which
no one is ever prosecuted is not operative.^

It is excellent that Japan has sent a large permanent
delegation to Switzerland to establish a system of liaison
with the International Labour Office of the League of
Nations. This company of young men will keep the
Japanese Government well informed. There is undoubt-
edly in Japan, under Western influence, a steady develop-
ment of sensitiveness to working-class conditions and a

1 For a declaration by Dr. Kuwata concerning bad food and " defianca
of hygienic rules," see Appendix XLII.

THE EXPLOITATION OF GIRLS 173

rapid growth of modern social ideas. But the Government
and the Diet will not step out far in advance of general
opinion, the most will naturally be made by the authori-
ties and trade interests of bad factory conditions on the
Continent of Europe and in some industries in the United
States, and the majority of a public which has been carefully
nurtured in the belief that a profitable industrialism is
the great desideratum for Japan will not be restive. Real
factory reform is not to be expected until an enlightened
view is taken by Japanese in general of the exploitation
of girls for any purpose. It is not in commercial human
nature. Eastern or Western, that factory directors and
shareholders should forgo without a struggle the ad-
vantage of possessing cheaper and more subjected labour
than their foreign rivals. Some influence may be exerted
in the right direction by the fact that those who are profit-
ing by cheap and docile labour may themselves be under-
sold before long by cheaper and still more docile labour in
China.' And in 1922 Japan is under an obligation, accepted
at the Washington Labour Conference, to stop women
working more than eleven hours a day and to abolish night
work. Meantime the labour movement makes progress.
It is significant that many of its leaders are under the
influence of " direct action " ideas. They hope little from
a Diet elected on a narrow franchise and supported by a
strong Government machine backed by the Conservative
farmer vote. Although, however, there does not seem
to be as yet a junction between the labour movement and
the unions of the tenant farmers, who have their own inter-
ests alone in view, the future may present unexpected
developments. As I write, the labour movement is conduct-
ing a trial of strength with the great Mitsubishi and
Kawasaki enterprises and is presenting a stronger front
than it has yet done.

This Chapter would give an unfair impression of the
relations of capital and labour in Japan if it included no
reference to the well-intentioned efforts made by several
large employers to improve the conditions of working-class
life and labour. Sometimes they have followed the example
1 See Appendix XLIII.

174 " FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S " GRIM TALE

of philanthropic firms in Great Britain and America. As
often as not they have been inspired by old Japanese ideas
of a master's responsibilities. Many leading industrials
have believed and still believe that by the conservation and
development of old ideas of paternalism and loyalty the
trade- union stage of industrial development maybe avoided.
This conviction was expressed to me by, among others,
Mr. Matsukata, of the famous Kawasaki concern, who has
made generous contributions to " welfare " work. My
own brief experience as an employer in Japan made me
acquainted with some canons in the relationship of employer
and employed which have lost their authority in the West.
Given wisdom on the part of masters, the prolonged bitter-
ness which has marked the industrial development of the
West need not be repeated in Japan, but whether that
wisdom will be displayed in time is doubtful. The Japan-
ese commercial world has been commendably quick to learn
in many directions in the West. It will be a serious reflection
on the intelligence of the country if the lessons of the
industrial acerbities of Europe and the United States
should not be grasped. Meantime it is a duty which the
foreign observer owes to Japan to speak quite plainly of at-
tempts as silly as they are useless • to obscure the lamentable
condition of a large proportion of Japanese workers, to hide
the immense profits which have been made by their em-
ployers and to pretend that factory laws have only to be
placed on the statute book in order to be enforced. But
if he be honest he must also recognise the handicap of
specially costly equipment * and of unskilled labour and
inexperience under which the Japanese business world is
competing for the place in foreign trade to which it has a
just claim. Such conditions do not in the least excuse
inhumanity, but they help to explain it.

' See Appendix XLII.

2 In a pre-War publication of the United States Department of Com-
merce it was stated that the cost of cotton mills per spindle is in England
32a., in the United States 44s., in Germany 52s., and in Japan 100s.

ARCHERY AT AX AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL, p. 1.53

OULTIVATIOIf 0¥ THE HILLSIDE, p. liS

174]

\ K<

5 I

w 5

FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE
WEST COAST

CHAPTER XX

" the garden wheee virtues abe cultivated "
(fukushima and yamagata)

BoswEiiL : If you should advise me to go to Japan I believe I should.
Johnson : Why yes, Sir, I am serious.

In one of my journeys I went from Tokyo to the extreme
north of Japan, travelling up the west coast and down the
east. Fukushima prefecture — in which is Shirakawa,
famous for a horse fair which lasts a week — encourages the
eating of barley, for on the northern half of the east coast
of Japan there is no warm current and the rice crop may be
lost in a cold season. " Officials of the prefecture and
county," someone said to me, " take barley themselves ;
enthusiastic guncho take it gladly."

The prefectural station, by selecting the best varieties
of rice for sowing, had effected a 10 per cent, improvement
in yield. In each county an official " agricultural en-
courager " had been appointed. The lectures given at the
experiment station were attended by 18,000 persons. The
studious who listen to the lectures had formed an associa-
tion that provided at the station a fine building where
supper, bed, breakfast and lunch cost 80 sen. It con-
tained a model of the Ise shrine with a motto in the hand-
writing of a well-known Tokyo agricultural professor,
" Difficulties Polish You."

" Some villagers," said a local authority, " want to
make the Buddhist temple the centre of the development
of village life. In several places agricultural products are
exhibited at Shinto shrines. Farmers offer them out of

17S

176 " GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED "

a kind of piety, but the products are afterwards criticised
from a technical point of view. This is done on the
initiative of the villagers encouraged by the prefecture."

Hereabouts the winter work of the people, in addition to
basket, rope and mat making, was paper making and
smoothing out the wrinkles of tobacco.' A considerable
number of people had emigrated to South America. The
principal need of the villages, it was stated, was money at
less than the current rate of 20 per cent. In one place I
found a factory built on the side of a daimyo's castle.

I was told of crops of konnyaku which had made one man
the second richest person in the prefecture and had there-
fore qualified him for membership in the House of Peers.
(The House includes one member from each prefecture as
the representative of the highest taxpayers of that pre-
fecture.)

During my journeys I picked up many odds and ends of
information by walking through the trains and having
chats with country people. I was also helped by county
and prefectural agricultural officials who, having learnt
of my movements, were kind enough to join me in the train
for an hour or so. One head of an agricultural school
which was full up with students told me that there were
already in Fukushima two prefectural and five county
agricultural schools.

Our train, half freight with a locomotive at each end,
went over the backbone of Japan through the usual series
of snow shelters and tunnels. Having surmounted the
heights we slid down into Yamagata. I should properly
write Yamagataken, which we cannot translate Yama-
gatashire, for a ken (prefecture) is made up of counties.
There are eleven counties in Yamagataken.

Almost any sort of dwelling looks tolerable in August, but
many of the houses that first caught our attention must be
lamentable shelters in winter. Some farmers, I learnt,
were " in a very bad condition." We dropped from a silk
and rice plateau and then to a region where the main crop
was rice. The bare hills to be seen in our descent were an
appalling spectacle when it was realised how close was their
^ See Appendix XLV.

CREMATION FOR TEN SHILLINGS 177

relation to the disastrous floods of the prefecture. A man
in the train had lost 10,000 yen by floods, a large sum in
rural Japan. In two years the prefecture had spent in
river-bank repairs nearly a million yen. A flood some years
ago did damage to the amount of 20 million yen. The
prefecture had a debt of 60 million yen, chiefly due to
havoc wrought by its big river. A yearly sum was spent on
afforestation in addition to what was laid out by the State
and by private individuals. A forestry association was
trying to raise half a million yen for tree planting. But
the flooding of the plains was not the only water trouble of
the Yamagatans. In one district they had a stream which
contained solutions of compounds of sulphuric acid so
strong that crops fail for three years on ground watered
from it. In other parts of the prefecture, however, farmers
had the advantage, enjoyed in many parts of Japan, of
being able to water from ammonia water springs.

Hereabouts I first noticed the device common to many
districts of having on the roof of a cottage a water barrel,
tub or cistern, ready to be emptied on the shingle roof when
sparks fly from a burning dwelling. Sometimes the wooden
water receptacles are wrapped round with straw.

In the prefectural city of Yamagata I heard of a primary
school which had a farm and made a profit, also of four
landowners who had engaged an agricultural expert for the
instruction of their tenants. " A very certain crop "
round about the city was grapes. Some 25,000 persons
yearly visited the prefectural 12-chd experiment station,
which within a year had distributed to farmers 7,600
cyanided fruit trees and 80 bushels of special seed rice.

Near the experiment station was a crematorium of ugly
brick and galvanised iron belonging to the city of Yamagata
at which 1,000 bodies were burnt in a year in furnaces
heated with pine blocks. A selection might be made from
four rates ranging from 35 sen to 5 yen. The most ex-
pensive rate was for folk who arrived in Western-style
cofiRns.

The experiment station had another institution at its
doors. This had to do not with the dead but with the
living. Its name was " The Garden where Virtues are

178 " GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED "

Cultivated." The director of it was the father of the
agricultural expert of the prefecture. The garden, which
was not a garden, was a home for bad boys, or rather for
thirty bad boys and one bad girl. The bad girl — the
director, being a man of humanity, common sense and
courage, thought it most necessary that there should be at
least one bad girl — acted as maidservant to the director.
The bad boys " maided " themselves and the school. The
lads were such as had fallen into the hands of the police.
They were being reformed in a somewhat original way by
a somewhat original director.

Early in the day they had their cold bath, which was
itself a break with Japanese custom, for, though most
Japanese have a nightly hot bath, they are content with a
basin wash in the morning. Then the boys " cleaned
school." Next they were marched up one by one to a mirror
and required to take a good look at themselves, in order,
no doubt, to see just how bad they were. After this they
were called on to " give thanks to the Emperor and
their ancestors." Finally came a half-hour lecture on
" morality." It was considereid that by this time the boys
were entitled to their breakfast. For open-air labour they
were sent to the experiment station, but they had manual
work also in their own school, where, among other things,
they " made useful things out of waste," thefincome from
which went to their families. On Sundays the master,
though he must be nearer sixty than fifty, fenced with
every one of the thirty boys in turn^ — no ordinary task, for
Japanese fencing calls not only for an eye and a hand, but
for a muscular back. Some wholesome-looking young
fellows, members of a young men's association, served as
volunteer masters and lived in the bare fashion that was so
good for the boys.

The director did not believe that bad boys were hopeless.
He said that not only the boys but their parents were better
for the work done in " The Garden where Virtues are Culti-
vated." He seemed to have become a sort of consulting
expert to primary school-masters who were at a loss to
know how to manage bad boys. Chastisement, as is well
known, is unusual in Japanese schools. The director of the

THE MOXA 179

human hortus inclusus confessed to me that though two of
his boys whom he had caught fighting might not have been
separated without, in the Western phrase, " feeling the
weight of his hand," his heaviest punishment on other
difficult occasions was the moxa.

The moxa brings us back to real horticulture. Moxa
is mogusa or mugwort. Mogusa means " burning herb."
The moxa is a great therapeutic agent in the Far East.
A bit of the dried herb is laid on the skin and set fire to
as a sort of blister. From the application of the moxa
as a cure for physical ills to its application for the cure of
bad boys is a natural step. One sees by the scars on the
backs of not a few Japanese that in their youth either their
health or their characters left something to be desired. The
moxa, then, is the rod in pickle in " The Garden where
Virtues are Cultivated," But I think it is not brought out
often. A wrestling ring in a mass of sand thrown down
in a yard, a harmonium, a blackboard for the boys to work
their will on, doors labelled " The Room of Patience,"
" The Room of Honesty," " The Room of Cleanliness " and
" The Room of Good Arrangement," not to speak of a
rabbit loping about the school premises — these and some
other touches in the management of the school spoke of
an even stronger influence toward well-doing than the moxa.
But even if the moxa should fail, the attention of the boys
could always be drawn to the crematorium.

One who knew the rural districts discoursed to me in this
wise : " The best men are not numerous, but neither are
the worst. I doubt whether the desire to enjoy life is as
strong in the Japanese as in the people of the West. Most
farmers would no doubt be happy with material comfort.
Pressed as they have been by material needs, they have
no time to think. When they are easier, they may get
something beyond the physical. At present we must
regard their material welfare as the most urgent thing."
But a man standing by, who was also a countryman,
strongly dissented. " Religion," he said, " is not only
important but fundamental."

I have been received by more than one prefectural
governor at eight in the morning. His Excellency of

180 " GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED "

Yamagata sets a good example by rising at five and by
going to bed at nine. He told me that he thought the
farmer's chief lack was cheap money. Low interest and a
long term might convert into arable 25,000 acres of barren
land in his prefecture. In the old days, as I knew, the
farmers drove tiumels considerable distances for irrigation,
but with modern engineering better results would be
possible if money were available. As to the misdeeds of
the rivers, it might almost be said that every village was
feeling the need of embanking and of going to the source
of loss by planting trees in the hills. Beautiful forests of
feudal period had been wasted in the early days of Meiji
and the result was now plain.

But attention had to be given to the minds as well as
the pockets of the villagers. Families that were once
reasonably content were now discontented. A livelihood
was harder to get, taxation was heavier and there was an
increase in needs. Country people imagined townspeople
to be comfortably off, " not realising how they were
tormented." Villagers envied townsmen their amuse-
ments. Some prefectures had forbidden the Bon dance
and had supplied nothing in its place. It was easy to see
why farmers no longer applied themselves so closely to
their calling and were wavering in their allegiance to
country life. Healthful amusements were necessary for
those whose minds were not much developed. Also,
country people should be taught the true character of
town life, and that agriculture, though it might not yield
the profit of commerce and industry, ensured a reasonably
happy life in healthful places where physical strength
could be enjoyed. The right kind of village libraries
should be encouraged. Music might perhaps be forced
into competition "with sakS.

A mental awakening by education was the final solution
of the rural problem, the Governor thought. Religion was
also important for the development of the village. Be-
lievers not under the eyes of others would avoid wrong-
doing because watched by heaven. Lectures on agriculture
and sanitation had a good influence when delivered by
priests. Temples were often schools before the era of

VILLAGE SNOBBERY 181

Meiji and so priests were socially active. Under the new
dispensation the work was taken out of their hands. So
they had come to care little for the affairs of the world.
But they were influential and the prefecture had asked for
their help. The merits of many priests might not be con-
spicuous, but the number of them who were active was
increasing and the villagers deferred to them if they took
any step.

The most hopeful thing in the villages was the awakening
of the young men : they were becoming " sincere," a
favourite Japanese word. For the most part the credit
societies were not efficient, but in one county credit societies
had lessened the business of the banks. The best way to
furnish capital to farmers was out of the capital of their
fellow farmers.

Possibly the girls of the villages were not making the
same advance as the boys. They did not go to their field
labour willingly. Sometimes when a woman was asked by
a neighbour on the road, " Have you been working on the
farm ? " she would answer, " No, I have been to the
temple." The host of women's papers had a bad effect.
With regard to the habutae (silk goods) factories, there was
a bright side, for they gave work to the girls in winter,
when they were idle " and therefore poor and sometimes
immoral." On the other hand, factory girls tended to
become vain and thriftless and the stay-at-home girls were
inclined to imitate them.

CHAPTER XXI

the " tanomoshi "
(yamagata)

Society is kept in animation by the customary and by sentiment. —
Mebboith

Six feet of snow is common on the line on which we travelled
in Yamagata prefecture, and washouts are not infrequent.
A train has been stopped for a week by snow. It was
difficult to think of snow when one saw groups of pilgrims
with their flopping sun-mats on their backs. The shrines
on three local mountain tops are visited by 20,000 people
yearly.

We bought at railway stations different sorts of gelatin-
ous fruit preparations. Most places in Japan have a
speciality in the form of a food or a curiosity that can be
bought by travellers.

In the great Shonai plain, which extends through three
counties, there are no fewer than 82,500 acres of rice and
the unending crops were a sight to see. A great deal of
the paddy land has been adjusted. In one county there is
the largest adjusted area in Japan, 20,000 acres. When
one raises one's eyes from the waving fields of illimitable
rice, the dominating feature of the landscape is Mount
Chokai with his August snow cap.

The three-storey hotel at which we stayed had been taken
to pieces and transported twenty miles. Such removal of
houses to a more convenient or, in the case of an hotel, a
more profitable site, is not uncommon. I sometimes
patronised at Omori a large hotel on a little hill halfway
between Yokohama and Tokyo, which had formerly been
the prefectural building at Kanagawa. In the hotel in

182

"WOULD THAT MY DAUGHTER—" 188

which I was now staying I was interested in the " Notice "
in my room :

1. A spitting-pot is provided. [Usually of bamboo or
porcelain.]

2. No towels are lent for fear of trachoma.^ [The travel-
ler in Japan carries his own towels, but a towel is a common
gift on a guest's departure in acknowledgment of his tea
money.]

3. There is a table of rates. Guests are requested
to say in which they desire to be reckoned. [To the
hotel proprietor, landlord or manager when the visit of
courtesy is paid on the guest's arrival. Otherwise a
judgment is formed from the guest's clothes, demeanour
and baggage.]

4. Please lock up your valuables or let us keep them.
[There are no locks on Japanese doors.]

5. Railroad, kuruma, box-sledge or automobile charges
on application. [The box-sledge shows what the country
is like in winter.]

In conversations about local conditions I was told that
" landowners of the middle grade " were suffering from
" trying to keep up their position." I remembered the
song which may be rendered :

Would that my daughter

Were married to a middle farmer.

With two cho of farm

And a tan in the wood.

No borrowing ; no lending ;

Both ends meeting.

Visiting the temple by turns —

Someone must stay at home.

Going to Heaven sooner or later.

What a happy life !

Tenants were rather well off because their standard of living
was lower than that of owners. Economic conditions were
improving in Yamagata, but in the adjoining prefecture of
Miyagi on the eastern coast of Japan " whole villages "

1 In the three years 1918-18 the percentage, of conscripts suffering from
trachoma was 15'8.
14

184 THE "TANOMOSHI"

had gone to Hokkaido. Some poor farmers were spending
only 5 sen a day on food, the rest of what they ate coming
entirely from their own holdings. Some farmers said,
" If you calculate our income, we are certainly unable to
make a living, but in some way or other we are able,"
which is what some small holders in many countries
would say.

I was told that a labourer's 5 tan could be cultivated by
working half days. Generally more was earned by labour-
ing than could be gained from a small patch of land. But
for half the year labourer's work was not obtainable. My
informant found small tenant labourers " well off " if both
husband and wife had wages : " they are able to buy a
bottle of sakS in the evening." Their position was better
than that of a small peasant proprietor.

One in a thousand of the families in a specified county
slept in straw. I heard of the payment of 20 to 25 per cent,
to pawnbroker lenders.

But there is another way of borrowing. The plan of the
ko may be adopted. A ko — it is odd that it should so closely
resemble our abbreviation " Co." — is simple and effective.
If a man is badly off or wants to undertake something
beyond his financial resources, and his friends decide to help
him, they may proceed by forming a ko. A ko is composed
of a number of people who agree to subscribe a certain sum
monthly and to divide the proceeds monthly by ballot,
beginning by giving the first month's receipts to the person
to succour whom the ko was formed. Suppose that the
subscription be fixed at a yen a month and that there are
fifty subscribers. Then the beneficiary — who pays in his
yen with the rest — gets 50 yen on the occasion of the first
ingathering. Every month afterwards a menaber who
is lucky in the ballot gets 50 yen. The monthly paying in
and paying out continue for fifty months and all the sub-
scribers duly get their money back, with the advantage of
having had a little excitement and having done a neigh-
bourly action.

But the ko, or tanomoshi, as I ought to call it, is not
always the innocent organisation I have described. There
is a tanomoshi system under which, after member A, the

SHOWING RESPECT TO RICE 185

beneficiary, has received the first month's subscriptions,
the other members are open to receive bids for their shares.
That is to say that, when the time comes round for the
second pajdng out of 50 yen, member F, who happens to
have become as much in need of ready money as A was,
offers, if the month's moneys be handed over to him, to
distribute among the members sums up to 20 yen. July
and December, when most people need ready money, are
months in which a hard-up member of a tanomoshi may
sometimes offer to distribute as much as 50 per cent, of
what he receives. The result of such bidding for shares is
that well-to-do members of a tanomoshi, who are the last
to draw their 50 yen, receive in addition to it all the extra
payments made by impoverished members who took their
shares earlier. Benevolence in a tanomoshi is not seldom
a mask for avarice that the law against usury cannot touch.
In truth, the only virtuous part of a tanomoshi may be the
first sharing out to the person in whose interest it was
supposed to be started. It should be added, however,
that there is a sort of tanomoshi which has no particular
beneficiary and is merely a kind of co-operative credit
society. In one place I heard of a tanomoshi that main-
tained a large fund for the relief of orphans and the sick.

In many villages there were private or co-operative
godowns for the storage of rice against fire, rats and damp.
Though the farmer who sends rice to such a store receives
a receipt, it is not legally a marketable document. Hence
an improvement on this simple storage plan. I visited the
premises of a company that could store more than 500,000
bushels of rice, and I found purification by carbon bi-
sulphide going on. The receipts given by this company —
" certificated " for large quantities and " tickets " for small
— certify not only the quantity but the quality of the rice,
and are readily cashed. The storehouse owners work under
a licence, and they have the advantage that the buyer of
the receipts of non-licensed stores is not protected by the
courts.

In the office of the company were samples of eleven
market qualities of rice, and before them, by way of showing
respect to the great food staple, was set the gohei of cut

186 THE "TANOMOSHI"

white paper seen in Shinto shrines. Outside the office, girl
porters carried the bales of rice to and fro. Close to the
store was a river in which some of the dusty, perspiring
porters were washing and cooHng themselves with a sim-
plicity to which Western civilisation is not yet equal.
Opposite them men were fishing by casting in draw nets
from the shore just as in biblical pictures the apostles are
represented as doing.

The company has a rice market where farmers were
putting their business in the dealers' hands. Each dealer
has to deposit 5,000 yen with the State. The dealer who
buys rice from a farmer has better polishing machinery
than the farmer possesses. Therefore he can give the rice
a more uniform appearance. By decreasing the weight of
the rice during the polishing he gives it he is also able to
lessen the sum payable for^ carriage and he has the value of
the oftal.

In order to visit farmers I rode some distance into the
country.' The village, which was of the Zen sect, was at
work cleaning out and straightening the stream which, as
is usual in many villages, ran through the middle of it. I
was impressed during my visit not only by the readiness
and intelligence with which my questions were answered
but by the good humour with which a stranger's inquiries
concerning personal matters was received. I had another
thought, that I might not have found a group of Western
farmers so well informed about their financial position as
these simple, primitively clad men.

Our huruma route to and from the village had been
through one great tract of well-adjusted rice fields. Ad-
justment was not difficult in this region because half the
land belongs to the Homma family, which has given much
study to the art of land-holding. For two centuries the
clan by charging moderate rents and studying the interests
of its tenants has maintained happy relations with them.

For many years a plan has been in operation by which

200 one-fan paddy-fields are cultivated by the agents or

managers of the estate, by tenants selected by their fellow

tenants for merit, by tenants chosen by the landlord for

^ For faiiuers' budgets, see Appendix XIII (end).

ROBES OF HONOUR 187

diligence and by others picked out because of their interest
in agriculture. In order to increase the zest of competition
the cultivators are divided into a black and a white com-
pany. The names of those who raise the naost and best
rice are pubUshed in the order of their success, farm
implements are distributed as prizes, the clever cultivators
are invited to the landlord's New Year entertainment to
the agents and managers, and at that feast " places of
distinction are given."

There is also a system of rewarding the best five-years
averages. A competition takes place between what are
called " dress fields " because those who get the best results
from them receive a ceremonial dress bearing the inscrip-
tion, " Prosperity and Welfare." The honour of wearing
these rqbes in the presence of their landlord at his annual
feast is valued by these simple countrymen.

Through the introduction by the landlord of horse
labour and ploughs — implements with which the farmers
were formerly unacquainted — second cropping of part of
the paddies has become possible. There is an elaborate
system of " progressive reduction " and " average reduc-
tion " of rents in a bad season, by which, it was explained,
" the industrious tenant enjoys a larger reduction than an
idle one." " Tenants are grouped in fives, which help one
another in their work and in cases of misfortune." In
their agreement with their landlord, tenants promise that
" wrong-doing shall be mutually reprimanded and counsel
shall be given one to another." " Again, if a tenant falls
ill, has his house burnt or meets with misfortune, assistance
shall be given by his fellows." During the war with Russia
the following instructions were issued :

Those enlisted in the army shall render their service at
the cost of their lives.

Those who stay at home shall do their best, complying
with the principles laid down by the Minister of Agriculture.

Relatives of soldiers at the front shall be helped and
sympathised with.

All shall subscribe to war bonds as much as possible.

All shall practise thrift and economy in accordance with
their social standing.

188 THE "TANOMOSHI"

Musical entertainments shall be given up for two years.

Methods proved to be effective in cultivation shall be
reported.

In the warm, cloudy days insects multiply rapidly.
Think of your brothers at the front, struggling against one
of the mighty military powers of the world, and be ashamed
to be vanquished by hordes of insects or masses of vegetable
growth in your fields. For the purpose of destroying
insects an ample supply of oil is to be had at the experi-
mental farm, as during last year ; and payment therefor
may be deferred until after harvest.

A communication to agents and managers says : " Com-
port yourselves in a way suitable to the dignity of an agent
of the clan. Bear in mind the privileges and favours
you enjoy, and exert yourselves to requite these favours.
Respect the name and the coat-of-arms of the clan," In
the neighbourhood there are about a hundred families
bearing the name of Homma.

BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST
CHAPTER XXII

" BON " SONGS AND THE SILENT PEIEST

(yAMAGATA, AKlTAji AOMORI, IWATE, MrSTAGI, FUKUSHIMA
AND IBARAKi)

The worst of our education is that it looks askance, looks over its
shoulder at sex. — B,. L. S.

A VILLAGE headman, encounted in the train just as we
were leaving Yamagata prefecture, gave me some insight
into the life of his little community. The fathers of two-
score families were shopkeepers and tradesmen — that is,
tradesmen in the old meaning of the word. There were
also a few labourers. About two hundred and fifty
families owned land and some of them rented additional
tracts. Another sixty were simply tenants. The poorer
farmers were also labourers or artisans. Most of them
were " comfortable enough." There were, however, half a
dozen people in the village who were helped from village
funds. Of the middle-grade farmers " it might be said that
they do not become richer or poorer."

The headman had formed a society which sent its
members to visit prefectures more developed agriculturally.
This society had engaged an instructor from without the
prefecture and he had taught horse tillage and the manage-
ment of upland fields and had made model paddies. Five
stallions had been obtained and a simple adjustment of
paddy-land had been brought about. As a result the rice
yield had risen.

This headman had also had addresses delivered in the
village for the first time. Further, after buying a number

1 Some Yamagata notes and those relating to Akita are conveniently
included in this Chapter, but these two prefectures are on the west coast.

189

190 "BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

of books, he had visited all the villagers in turn and shown
them the books and had said to each of them, " I wish you
to buy a book and, after reading it, to give it to the library."
" And," he told me, " none of them objected." Soon a
valuable library came into existence.

This admirable functionary felt some satisfaction at
having been able to abate the custom according to which
the young men, with the tacit permission of their parents,
had gone into the neighbouring town after harvest " to
visit the immoral women." " They used to spend as much
as 5 yen," said our headman. He had started worthier
forms of after-harvest relaxation, and " the cost of the
amusement days is now only 50 or 60 sen."

When we got on the main line again and pursued our way
farther north, it was through even stouter snow shelters
and through many tunnels. Not a few miserable dwellings
were to be seen as we passed into Akita prefecture. We
broke our journey after some hours' travelling to stay the
night at a rather primitive hot spring inn four or five miles
up in the hills. A slight rain was falling. Four passengers
at a time made the ascent to the hotel, squatting on a mat
in an old contractor's wagon, pushed along roughly laid
rails by two perspiring youths in rain-cloaks of bark strips.
At the inn, on going to the bath, I found therein a miscel-
laneous collection of people of both sexes from grandparents
to grandchildren. One bather enlivened us by perform-
ances on the flute, which, if a musical instrument must
be played in a bath, seems as suitable as any. In this
rambling inn there were many farmers who, by preparing
their own food and doing for themselves generally, were
holiday-making at bedrock prices.

As it was the Bon season, when the spirits of the dead are
supposed to return, I was a witness of the method adopted
to help the ghosts to find their old homes. At the top of
a 30 or 40 ft. pole a lantern is fixed with a pulley. Fastened
up beside the lantern is a bunch of green stuff, cryptomeria
in many cases. The lantern is lighted each evening for a
week. Having heard a good deal about the suppression of
Bon dances and songs I was interested when a fellow-guest
began talking about them. He had seen many Bon dances

BUCOLIC WIT 191

and had heard many Brni songs. There can be no doubt
that there has been some unenlightened interference with
the Bon gathering. The country people seem to be suffer-
ing from the determination of officialdom to make an end
of everything in country as well as town that may be
considered " uncivilised " by any foreigner, however ill
instructed. In towns the sexes are not accustomed to
meet, but country people must work together ; therefore
they find it natural to dance and sing together. As to the
Bon songs, it is common sense that expressions which may
be regarded as outrageous and indecent in a drawing-room
may not be so terrible on a hilltop among rustics used to
very plain speech and to easy recognition of natural facts
that are veiled from townspeople. My chance acquaint-
ance at the inn recited a number of Bon songs and next
morning brought me some more that he had remembered
and had been kind enough to write down. They merely
established the fact that bucolic wit is as elemental in Japan
as in other lands. Most of the songs had a Rabelaisian
touch, some were nasty, but nearly all had wit. The
following is an entirely harmless example :

Mr. Potato of the Countryside

Got his new European suit.

But a potato is still a potato.

He took one and a half rin ' out of his bag

And bought amS ' and licked at it.

Here are three others :

Tip-toe, tip-toe.
Creaks the floor.
Girl made prayer,
Dreading ghost.
But 'twas her lover
Who stealthily came.

Dancer, dancer.
Do not laugh at me.
My dance is very bad,
But I only began last year.

' A rim is the tenth part of a sen, which in its turn is a farthing.
> A kind of barley sugar.

192 "BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

How thin a thin-legged man may be
It he does not take his miso soup.'

The quality of these dramatic songs will be entirely
missed if the reader does not bear in mind the mimetic skill
of the amateur Japanese dancer and his power as a con-
tortionist. Clever dancers often use their powers in a
humorous pretence of clumsiness. Of the freer sort of
songs I may quote two :

Never buy vegetables in Third Street,'
You'll lose 30 sen and your nose.

Onions from a basket hanging in the benjo '
Were cooked in miso * and given to a blind man,
But that chap was greatly delighted.

Some of the other songs may be described, I suppose,
as obscene, if obscene be, as the dictionary says, " some-
thing which delicacy, purity and decency forbid to be
exposed " ; but " delicacy, purity and decency " must be
considered in relation to climate, work and social usage.
What one feels about some critics of Bon songs and dances
is that they need a course of The Golden Bough. Such
an illustration as Bon songs furnish of the moral and mental
conditions from which country folk must raise themselves
is of value if rural sociology is a real thing. There is far
too much theorising about the countryman and the country-
woman, far too much idealising of them and far too much
rating of them as clods. If country people of all lands are
free-spoken let us be neither hypercritical nor hypocritical.
A big gap seems to yawn between the paddy-field peasant
in his breech clout and the immaculate clubman, but what
difference is there between the savour of the average Bon
song and of many a smoking-room jest which is not to the
credit of the peasant ? At an inn in Naganoken a Japanese
artist on holiday showed me his sketch book. Among
his drawings was a representation of a shrine festival which
he had witnessed in a remote village. A festival car was

1 Bean soup.

* A street in Akita in which many prostitutes live.

3 Closet. * Bean paste.

"SO DESUKA?" 198

being pushed by a knot of youths and by about an equal
number of young women and all of them were nude. But
no enlightened person believes that either decency or morals
depends on clothing, or would expect to find more essential
indecency and immorality in that village than in a modern
city. What one would expect to find would be marriages
between physically well-developed men and women.

How the race moves on is shown in the famous tale of a
saintly Zen priest which I first heard in that little hill inn
but was afterwards to see in dramatic form on the stage of
a Tokyo theatre. An unmarried girl in the village in which
the priest's temple was situated was about to have a child.
She would not confess to her angry father the name of her
lover. At last she attributed her condition to the greatly
honoured priest. Her father was astonished but he was
also glad that his daughter was in the favour of so eminent
a man. So he went to the priest and said that he brought
him good tidings : the girl whom he had deigned to notice
was about to have a child. The father went on to express
at length his sense of obligation to the priest for the honour
done to his family. All the priest said in reply was. So
desuka ? (Is that so ?) Soon after the birth of the child the
girl besought her father to marry her to a certain young
farmer. The father, proud of the association with the
priest, refused. Finally the girl told her parent that it was
not the priest but the young farmer who was the father of
her child. The parent was aghast and chagrined as he
recalled the terms in which he had addressed the saintly
man. He betook himself at once to the temple and
expressed in many words his feelings of shame and deep
contrition. The priest heard him out, but all he said
was. So desuka ?

Yamagata signifies " shape of a mountain " and Akita
means " autumn rice field." Although Akita prefecture
is mountainous there is a greater proportion of level land
in it than in Yamagata. I find " Rice, rice, rice " written
in my notebook. An agricultural expert gave me to under-
stand that fifteen per cent, of the farmers were probably
living on rents or on the dividends of silk factories, that 55
or 60 per cent, were of the middle grade with an annual

194 "BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

income of 300 yen, that 25 or 30 per cent, had about 150
yen — ^the lowest sum on which a family could be supported
— and that there were 3 or 4 per cent, of farm labourers
who earned less than 150 yen. There had been much paddy
adjustment and the prefecture was spending 300,000 yen a
year for the encouragement of adjustment and the opening
of new paddies. In the case of newly opened fields, tenants
had contracts, but ordinary tenancies were by word of
mouth generation after generation. A great deal of agri-
cultural instruction was given by the prefecture, the
counties and the villages, and in 30 years the rice crop had
been doubled although the area had remained about the
same. In order to secure help in the work of rural ameliora-
tion a gathering of Buddhist priests and another of Shinto
priests had been lectured to at the prefectural office.
Nearly 300,000 yen had been spent in twelve months on
afforestation. The following year a special effort was to
be made to spend 500,000 yen. A society raised young trees
and sold them at cheap rates to farmers. Every young
men's association in the prefecture had land and had planted
trees. It was in Akita that I first saw peat in Japan.
There are said to be 7,000 acres of it in the country.

The prefecture of Aomori forms the northern tip of the
mainland. Apart fronti its enormous forest area and the
railroad stacks of sawn lumber, what caught my eye were
the apple orchards and the number of farmers on horseback
or seated in wagons. Who that has been in Japan has not
a memory of narrow winding roads along which men and
women and young people are pulling and pushing carts ?
Here many farming folk rode. I was told that Akita
produced apples and potatoes to the value of a million yen
each and that there were ten co-operative apple societies.
Much of the fruit went to Russia.

Having passed through the city of Aomori we started to
come down the east coast. An agricultural authority
said that the net profit of a dry farm, that is a farm without
any paddy, was almost negligible. Because of low prices,
cattle keeping had decreased to half what it used to be.
(The only cattle I saw from the train were on the road
with harness on their backs.) Only 18 yen could be got for

"ONLY ROBBERS" 196

a two-year-old ; the Aomori cattle were indeed the cheapest
in Japan. The expert added, " There are no buyers ;
only robbers."

But the dealers were not the only robbers. Boats came
from Hokkaido and stole cattle from the prefecture to the
number of a hundred a year. Sometimes horses were taken
too, but horse thefts were rare " because you cannot kill a
horse and sell it for meat." The average price of a two-
year-old not thus illicitly vended was 70 yen. (It was a
little less in the next prefecture of Iwate and in Hokkaido.)
Half of the stalhons belonging to the " Bureau of Horse
Pohtics " of the Ministry of Agriculture were bought in
Aomori.

The farmers by the lake that we passed on our way south
were described as " very poor," for their soil was barren
and their climate bad. Their crops were only a third of
what could be raised in another part of the prefecture.
The agriculture of all the prefectures through which I now
journeyed south to Tokyo suffer from the cold temperature
of the sea. The east- coast temperature drops in winter
to 7 degrees below freezing.' " Living is more and more
difficult," said someone to me. " The number of tenants
increases because farmers get into debt and have to sell
their land. Millet and buckwheat are much eaten.
Although the temperature is 5 per cent, colder in Hokkaido,
the people do worse here because our soil is barren and there
is no profitable winter occupation like lumbering. Only
10 per cent, of the rural population save anything. In bad
times 65 per cent, of the families get into debt."

At Morioka in Iwate prefecture I visited the excellent
higher agricultural college, where there were 300
students. The competition for places, as at every educa-
tional institution in Japan, was keen. The number who
sat at the last entrance examinations — ^the average age was
twenty — was 317, of whom only 80 got in. There were
15 professors and 10 assistants. The charge to students

^ The warm black current from the south flows up the east and west
eoasts. Some distance north of Tokyo, the east-coast current meets the
cold Oyashiro current from Kamchatka, and is turned ofi towards
America.

196 "BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

was 300 yen for a year of ten months. The annual cost of
the college to the Government was 70,000 yen. Of the
foreign volumes among the 20,000 books in the library 50
per cent, were German, 30 per cent. English and 20 per cent.
American.

An apiary of a single skep in a roped-off enclosure was an
illustration of unfamiliarity with bees. It seemed strange
to find that in this up-to-date and efficient institution the
biggest implement for cutting grass which was in use, a
sickle of course, had a blade no longer than 8 inches.
Hung up at the back of a shed I noticed a rusty scjrthe.
When I tried to show what it could do it was suggested
that the implement was " too heavy, too difficult and too
dangerous."

Iwate is the poorest of the northern prefectures, for bad
weather so often comes when the rice is in flower. As
many as 40 per cent, of the people were just making ends
meet. Another 40 per cent, were always dogged by poverty.
Millet was the food of 10 per cent, of the farmers ; millet,
salted vegetables and bean soup were the meagre diet of 5
per cent ; the staple food of the remainder was barley and
rice. There are few temples in Iwate compared with the
rest of Japan. " Education is more backward than in
other prefectures," someone said. " The farmers are
not able. Too much sak6 is drunk." Farmers come in to
Morioka to sell charcoal and wood and I saw some of them
turning into the sak6 shops.

There was talk in praise of millet. Though low socially
in the dietary of Japan, it has merits. It withstands cold
and even salt spray. It ripens earlier than rice and so may
sometimes be harvested before a spell of bad weather.
It yields well, it will store for some time, its taste is " little
inferior to rice and better than that of barley " and it
contains more protein than rice. It is cooked after slight
polishing and the straw provides fodder. " In the north-
east, where millet is most eaten," I was told, " there are
people who are 5 ft. 10 ins, to 6 ft. and there are many
wrestlers." The seeds in the handsome heavy ears of
millet are about the size of the letter O in the footnote type
of this book.

THE YOUNG MEN'S PAST 197

In the train a farmer who knew the prefecture spoke of
Bon songs and dances : " The result of the action against
them was not good. The meeting of young men and
women at the Bon gatherings was in their minds half the
year in prospect and half in retrospect. Bearing in mind
the condition of the people, even the worst Bon songs are
not objectionable. But when the people become educated
some songs will be objectionable."

Visitors to a poor prefecture like Miyagi must be sur-
prised to see so much adjusted paddy. There is more
adjusted paddy in Miyagi than in any other prefecture.
Some 90,000 acres have been taken in hand and a large
amount of money has been spent. The work has been
carried out largely by way of giving wages to farmers during
famine. A new tunnel brought water to 6,000 acres.
" The bad climate of Miyagi cannot be mended," I was
told ; "all that can be done is to seek for the earliest
varieties of rice, to sow early, to work as diligently as
possible and to deal with floods by embanking the rivers and
by tree planting." As many as 7,000 people go from
Miyagi to Hokkaido in a year. It seems to point to a
certain amount of fecklessness that 15 per cent, of them
return.

One man I spoke with during my journey south gave a
vivid impression of the influence of young men's associa-
tions. " Before they started," said he, " the young men
spent their time in singing indecent songs, in gambling,
in talking foolishly, and twice or thrice a year in im-
morality. A young widow has sometimes been at fault ;
the parents-in-law need her help and village sentiment
is against her remarriage. The suppression of Bon dances
has done more harm than good by keeping out of sight
what used to be said and done openly.' Two or three
priests are active in this prefecture. Where the Shinshu
sect is strong you will find little divorce. But the influ-
ence of Buddhism has been stationary in recent years.
There is some action by missionaries of the Japanese

' See A Free Farmer m a Free State, pp. 173-4, for an acoovmt of the
custom in Zealand by which peasants preserved themselves from the
calamity of childless marriage.

198

BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

Christian church, but the number of Christians among real
rustics is very small."

At Sendai it was pleasant to see a prefectural office — or
most of it — housed in a Japanese building instead of a
dreadful edifice " in Western style." In feudal times the
building was a school. Portraits of daimyos and famous
scholars of the Sendai clan surround the Governor's room,
and adjoining it is the tatomi-covered apartment in which
the daimyo used to sit when he was present at the examina-
tions. Among the portraits is one of a retainer which was

painted in Rome,
where he had been
sent on a mission
of inquiry.

In his scarecrow-
making the Japan-
ese farmer seems to
have great faith in
the Western-style
cap, felt hat, or
even umbrella, if he
can get hold of one.
Ordinarily, the
bogey man has a
bow with the arrow
strung. Occasion-
ally a farmer seeks
to scare birds by
means of clappers
which he places in the hands of a child or an old man who
sits in a rough shelter raised high enough to overtop the rice.
Now and then there is a clapper connected with a string to
the farm-house. I have also seen a row of bamboos carried
across a paddy field with a square piece of wood hanging
loosely against each one. A rope connecting all the bam-
boos with one another was carried to the roadway, and now
and then a passer-by of a benevolent disposition, or with
nothing better to do, or, it may be, standing in some degre*
of relationship to the paddy-field proprietor, gave the rope
a tug. Then all the bamboos bent, and as they smartly

A SC ABECBOW. — A SKETCH BY PbOFESSOB NaSTJ.

SINCE THE SHOGUNATE 199

straightened themselves caused the clappers to give forth
a sound sufficiently agitating to sparrow pillagers in several
paddies.

On leaving Miyagi we were once more in Fukushima, with
notes on which this account of a trip to the north of Japan
and back again began. This time, instead of journeying
by routes through the centre of the prefecture, as in coming
north, or as in the visit paid to Fukushima in the Tokyo-to-
Niigata journey, I travelled along the sea coast. When we
had passed through Fukushima we were in Ibaraki, a charac-
teristic feature of which is swamps. Drainage operations
have been going on since the time of the Shogunate. There
is in this prefecture the biggest production of beans in
Japan, and we have come far enough south to see tea
frequently. In the lower half of the prefecture we are in
the great Kwanto plain, the prefectures in which are most
conveniently surveyed from Tokyo.

CHAPTER XXIII

A MIDNIGHT TALK

True religion is a relation, accordant with reason and knowledge, which
man establishes with the infinite life surrounding him, and it is such as
binds his life to that infinity, and guides his conduct. — Tolstoy

One of the most instructive experiences I had during my
rural journeys occurred one night when I was staying at a
country inn. At a late hour I was told that the Governor
of the prefecture was in a room overhead. I had called on
him a few days before in his prefectural capital. He was a
large daimyo-like figure, dignified and courteous, but seem-
ingly impenetrable. There was no depth in our talk. His
aloof and xmcommunicative manner was deterring, but by
this time I had learnt the elementary lesson of unending
patience and freedom from hasty judgment that is the first
step to an advance in knowledge of another race. I felt
that I should like to know more about the man inside this
Excellency. No one had told me anything of his life.

Now that he was in the same inn with me it was Japanese
good manners to pay him a visit. So I went upstairs
with my travelling companion, telling him on the way that
we should not remain more than five minutes. We were
wearing our bath kimonos. The Governor was also at
his ease in one of these garments. He was kneeUng at a
low table reading. We knelt at the other side, spoke on
general topics, asked one or two questions and began to
take our leave. On this the Governor said that he would
like very much to ask me in turn some questions. We
spoke together until one in the morning, his Excellency
continually expressing his unwillingness for us to go. He
spoke rapidly and with such earnestness that I was balked
of understanding what he said sentence by sentence. The

200

"IF WE SACRIFICE OURSELVES" 201

next day my companion wrote out a summary of what the
Governor had said and I had tried to say in reply. As a
brief report of a talk of three hours' duration it is plainly
imperfect. The artless account is of some interest, how-
ever, because it furnishes an impression at once of an
engaging simplicity and sincerity in the Japanese character
and of the pressure of Western ideas.

Governor : " There have died lately my mother, my wife
and one of my daughters. Some of my officials come to me
and ask what consolation I am getting. What do I feel at
first when such things happen ? Am I content under such
misfortune ? I feel that I should be happy if I could believe
something and tell it to them. I am tormented by the
conflict of my scientific and rehgious feelings. How is the
relation of science and religion in your mind ? Are you
tormented or are you composed and peaceful even when
meeting such misfortune as mine ?

Myself: "It is certain that it is not well to torment
ourselves, for grief is loss.' As to science, it did not drive
away religion. Science seeks after truth in all matters, but
there are truths which are to be searched out through our
feeling, conscience and instinct. Religion has to do with
these truths. It is quite good for religion if all supersti-
tion, dogma and ignorance are cleared away by science.
Concerning a future life, we are hampered in our thinking
by our traditions, prejudices, deep ignorance and poor
mental strength and training ; and much energy is needed
in the world for present service. Some have thought of an
immortality which is that a man's sincere influence, his
unselfish manifestations, those things which are the
essence of a man's existence, will live on ; in other words,
that the best of a fife is immortal ; but not in the way of
ghosts. As to the memory, example and achievement of
the dead it is sure that we are aided by them."

Governor : "If we sacrifice ourselves for the public good

1 " The strength that is given at such times arises not from ignoring loss
or persuading oneself that the thing is not that is, but from the resolute
setting of the face to the East and the taking of one step forwards. Any-
thing that detaches one, that makes one turn from the past and look
simply at what one has to do, brings with it new strength and new intensity
of interest." — ^Haldane.

202 A MIDNIGHT TALK

it is the best that we can do in this world. But are you
composed at the sad news concerning the Lusitania ? If
you think that event was directed by divine destiny then
you can be composed and may not complain."

Myself: " Such an accident may only be by divine
destiny in the sense that everything in this world, the
saddest misery, the greatest misfortunes, are suffered in
the development of mankind, so that even this War is
unquestionably for the final betterment of the whole world."
Governor : " Please say what is God."
Myself: " ' If I could tell you what God is, I should be
God myself.' Many of my own countrymen have been
taught that God is ' Spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable
in His Being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness
and truth.' There are those who would say that God may
be the total developing or bettering energy, and that we are
all part of God. Some people have a more personal con-
ception of God, the sum of all goodness. May not his Excel-
lency consider the peasant's idea of a Governor of a pre-
fecture ? The peasant's idea of a Governor is greater than
that of any particular Governor. His Excellency's good
works are not done by himself alone, but by all the good
energies inherent in the Governorship. Those energies are
unseen but real. The Japanese army and navy triumphed
by the virtue of the Emperor — by the virtue of ideas."
Governor : " The thought of Sensei ' is quite Oriental."
Myself: " All religions are from Asia."
Governor: " This world where stars move, flowers blossom
and decay, spring and autumn come, and people are born
and die is too full of mystery, but I can feel some intelligence
working through it though incomprehensible."

Myself: " Alas, people will try to explain that incompre-
hensibleness."

Governor : " What you have said is what I have been
accepting to this day. It satisfies my reason, but I feel in
my heart something lacking. I seek for a warmer inter-
pretation of the world, for a more heartfelt relation with
cosmos. Several of my officials themselves lost their dear

1 Teacher, inatruotor, master, or a polite way of saying " You " — ^the
us ual title by which I was addressed.

A PARBOILED GOVERNOR 203

children recently. They cannot with heart and brain accept
their loss, and they ask my direction."

Myself: " In the New Testament one thing is taught,
God is Love. We can be composed if we feel that God is
love. The Gospel of John is the most tender story in the
world."

(Sovernor : "It may be difl&cult for all people to come to
the same point and agree altogether. We must solve a
great problem by ourselves."

Myself: " We have opportunities of doing some good
works in this life. Therefore we must go on till we die and
we must be content at being able to do something good,
directly or indirectly, in however small measure. ' Earth
is not as thou ne'er hadst been,' wrote an Englishwoman
poet of great scientific ability ' who died while yet a young
woman,"

Governor : "I think of Napoleon dying tormented on
St. Helena, and the peaceful attitude of Socrates though
being poisoned by enemies. But Socrates had done many
good things, yet he was poisoned."

Myself: " Socrates had done what he could for his
country and the world, yet by his brave death he could add
one thing more." '

The Governor said that he " got comfort from our talk,"
but this did not perfectly reassure me. The next evening,
however, I found a parboiled Governor alone in the bath
and he greeted me very warmly. Without our interpreter
we could say nothing that mattered, but we were glad of this
further meeting in the friendly hot water. It seemed that
our rtiidnight talk would be memorable to both of us.

It is convenient to copy out here the following dicta on
religion and morals which were delivered to me at various
times during my journeys :

A. " The weakest deterrent influence among us is, ' It
is wrong.' A stronger deterrent influence is, ' Heaven
will punish you.' The strongest deterrent influence of all
is, ' Everybody will laugh at you.' "

' Constance Naden.

2 " The Phaedo was bought for us by the death of Socrates." — Quilleb
Couch.

204 A MIDNIGHT TALK

B. "In Japan all religions have been turned into
sentiment or sestheticism."

C. {after speaking appreciatively of the ideas animating
many Japanese Christians) : " All the same I do not feel
quite safe about trusting the future of Japan to those
people."

D. " We Japanese have never been spiritually gifted.
We are neither meditative and reflective like the Hindus
nor individualistic like the Anglo-Saxons. Nevertheless,
like all mankind we have spiritual yearnings. They will
be best stirred by impulses from without."

E. {in answer to my enquiry whether a Quakerism which
compromised on war, as John Bright' s male descendants had
done, might not gain many adherents in Japan) : " Other
sects may have a smaller ultimate chance than Quakerism.
One mistake made by the Quakers was in going to work
first among the poorer classes. The Quakers ought to have
begun with the intellectual classes, for every movement in
Japan is from the top."

F. " You will notice what a number of the gods of Japan
are deified men. There is a good side to the earth earthy,
but many Japanese seem unable to worship anything
higher than human beings. The readiest key to the re-
ligious feeling of the Japanese is the religious life of the
Greeks. The more I study the Greeks the more I see our
resemblance to them in many ways, in all ways, perhaps,
except two, our lack of philosophy and our lack of physical
comeliness."

G. " As to uncomeliness there are several Japanese
types. The refined type is surely attractive. If many
Japanese noses seem to be too short, foreigners' noses seem
to us to be too long. The results of intermarriage between
Western people and Japanese who are of equal social and
educational status and of good physique should be closely
watched."

H. "In our schools an hour or two a week is reserved for
culture, but the true spirit of culture is lacking. The
Imperial Rescript on education is very good moral
doctrine, but the real life's aim of many of us is to be
well off, to have an automobile, to become a Baron or to

A JUSTER IDEA ABOUT "IDOLS" 205

extend the Empire. We do not ask ourselves, ' For
what reason ? ' "

I. " I conduct certain classes which the clerks of my
bank must attend. The teaching-I give is based on Con-
fucian, Christian and Buddhist principles. I try to make
the young men more manful. I constantly urge upon them
that ' you must be a man before you can be a clerk.' "

J. (a septuagenarian ex-daimyo) : " Confucianism is the
basis of my life, but twice a month I serve at my Shinto
shrine and I conduct a Buddhist service in my house
morning and evening. It is necessary to make the profes-
sion that Buddha saves us. I do not believe in paradise.
It is paradise if when I die I have a peaceful mind due to a
feehng that I have done my duty in life and that my sons
are not bad men. Unless I am peaceful on my deathbed
I cannot perish but must struggle on. Therefore my sons
must be good. I myself strove to be filial and I have
always said to my sons, ' Fathers may not be fathers but
sons must be sons.' "

K. {the preceding speaker's son expressing his opinion on
another occasion) : " My father as a Confucian is kind to
people negatively. We want to be kind positively because
it is right to be kind. As to filial obedience, even fathers
may err ; we are righteous if we are right. My father is a
Shintoist because it is our national custom. He wants to
respect his ancestors in a .wide sense and he desires that
Japan, his family and his crops may be protected."

L. " I wish foreigners had a juster idea about ' idols.'
There is a difference between frequenters of the temples
believing the figures to be holy and believing them to be
gods. Every morning my mother serves before her shrine
of Buddha but she does not believe our Buddha to be God.
She would not soil or irreverently handle our Buddha, but
it is only holy as a symbol, as an image of a holy being.
My mother has said to me, ' Buddha is our father. He
looks after us always ; I cannot but thank him. If there
be after life Buddha will lead me to Paradise. There is no
reason to beg a favour.' My mother is composed and
peaceful. All through her life she has met calamities and
troubles serenely. I admire her very much, She is a

206 A MIDNIGHT TALK

good example of how Buddha's influence makes one
peaceful and spiritual. But such religious experience may
not be grasped from the outside by foreigners."

M. " When I am in a temple or at a shrine I reaUse its
value in concentrating attention. The daily domestic
service before the shrine in the house also ensures some
religious life daily. Many of my countrymen no doubt
regard religion as superstition ; they know little of spiritual
life. For some of them patriotism or humanitarian senti-
ments or eagerness to seek after scientific truth takes the
place of religion. Most men think that they can never
comprehend the cosmos and say, ' We may believe only what
we can prove. Let us follow not after preachers but after
truth.' I believe with your Western philosophers who say
that the cosmos is not perfect but that it is moving towards
perfection. Many think that this War shows that the
cosmos is not perfect. Spiritual life is living according
to one's purest consciousness. But what is of first import-
ance is our actions. It is not enough merely to strive after
moral development. One must strive after economic and
social development. Some religious people think only of
the spiritual life and have no sympathy with economics.
The labours of such religious people must be of small
value."

In later Chapters the views of other thoughtful Japanese
are noted down as they were communicated to me.

THE BLIND HEADMAN AND HIS
COLLECTING-BAG. p. 229

ME. YANAGHITA IN HIS CORONA-
TION OEREMONr EOBES. p. xv

206]

PORTABLE APPARATUS FOR
RAISING WATER, p. 216

VILLAGE SCHOOL "WITH PORTRAIT OF
FLORENCE NIGHTIiTGALE. p. 127

EIVER-BBDS IN THE SUMMER
From which may be imagined the power ot the water in time of flood, p. 92

[207

THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU
CHAPTER XXIV

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "
(TOKUSHIMA, KOCHI AND KAGAWA)

The most capital article, the character of the inhabitants. — Tytler

In travelling southwards I noticed between Kyoto and
Osaka that farms were being irrigated from wells in the
primitive way by means of the weighted swinging pole and
bucket. Along the coast to the south, indeed as far as
Hiroshima, there have been great gains from the sea, and
in the neighbourhood of Kobe there are three parallel roads
which mark successive recoveries of land. Before crossing
the Inland Sea at Okayama to Shikoku (area about 1,000
square miles) I visited one of the new settlements on
recovered land. The labour available from a family was
reckoned as equal to that of two men, and as much as
4 to 5 cho was allotted to each house. It will be seen how
much larger is this area — 5 cho is 12^ acres — than the
average Japanese farming family must be content with,
a httle less than 3 acres. The company supplied houses,
seeds, manures, etc., and after all expenses were met the
workers were allowed 25 per cent, of the net income of their
summer crop and ^5 per cent, of the net income of their
second crop. The cultivation was directed by the company.
There had been 300 applications for the last twenty houses
built. An experiment station was maintained, and a cam-
paign against a rice borer had been of benefit to the amount
of about 10,000 yen. I found the company's winnowing
machine discharging its chaff into the furnace of the rice-
drying apparatus.

One of the experts of the company came with me for some

207

208 LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "

distance in the train in order to discuss some of his problems.
He thought agricultural work could be done in less back-
breaking ways. He wanted a small threshing machine
which would be suitable not only for threshing small
quantities of rice or corn but for easy conveyance along the
narrow and easily damaged paths between the rice fields.
If he had such a machine he would like to improve it so
that it would lay out the threshed straw evenly, so making
the straw more valuable for the many uses to which it is
put. He wished to see a machine invented for planting
out rice seedlings and another contrivance devised for
drying wheat. The company's rice-drying machine handled
200 koku of rice a day, but there were difficulties in drying
wheat. (In many places I noticed the farmers drying their
corn by the primitive method of singeing it and thus
spoiling it.)'

On the Inland Sea, aboard the smart little steamer of
the Government Railways, my companion spoke of the
extent to which sea-faring men, a conservative class, had
abandoned the use of the single square sail which one sees
in Japanese prints ; the little vessels had been re-rigged in
Western fashion. But many superstitions had survived
the aboUshed square sails. The mother of my fellow-
traveller once told him that, when she crossed the Inland
Sea in an old-style ship and a storm arose, the shipmaster
earnestly addressed the passengers in these words, " Some-
body here must be unclean ; if so, please tell me openly."
The title of the book my companion was reading was The
History of the Southern Savage. Who was the " Southern
Savage " ? The word is namban, the name given to the
early Portuguese and Spanish voyagers to Japan. (The
Dutch were called komojin, red-haired men.) In looking
through the official railway guide on the boat I saw that
there was a list of specially favourable places for viewing
the moon. An M.P. passenger told me that the average
cost of getting returned to the Diet was 10,000 yen.*

^ At Aajo agricultural experiment station I saw eighteen kinds of
small threshing machines at from 13 to 18 yen. There were husking
machines of three sorts. A rice thresher was equal to dealing with the
crop of one tan, estimated at 2 kohu 4 to, in three hours,

2 See Appendix XLVI.

IN THE DAIMYO'S TOWER 209

The difficulties of communication in Shikoku are so
considerable that I was compelled to leave the two pre-
fectures of Tokushima and Kochi unvisited. Kochi is
without a yard of railway line. In the prefecture of Ehime
most of my journey had to be made by kuruma. Com-
munication between the four prefectures of Shikoku — ^the
one in which I landed was Kagawa — is largely conducted
by coasting steamers and sailing craft. An interesting
thing in Kochi is the area by the sea in which two crops of
rice are grown in the year. Tokushima holds a leading
place in the production of indigo. At one place in the hills
the adventurous have the satisfaction of crossing a river
by means of suspension bridges made of vine branches.

The streets of Takamatsu, the capital of Kagawa, are
many of them so narrow that the shopkeepers on either
side have joint sun screens which they draw right across
the thoroughfares. Here I found the carts hauled by a
smallish breed of cow. The placid animals are handier in
a narrow place and less expensive than horses. They are
shod, like their drivers, in waraji. In Shikoku the cow or ox
is generally used in the paddies instead of the horse. " It
is slower but strong and can plough deep," one agricultural
expert said. " It eats cheaper food than the horse, which
moves too fast in a small paddy. Cows and oxen are prob-
ably not working for more than seventy-five or eighty days
in the year."

At Takamatsu I had the opportunity of visiting a
daimyo's castle. I was impressed by its strength not only
because of the wide moats but because of the series
of earthen fortifications faced with cyclopean stonework
through which an invading force must wind its way.
There was within the walls a surprisingly large drilling
ground for troops and also an extensive drug garden.
The present owner of the castle proposed to build here
a library and a museum for the town. I was glad of
the opportunity to ascend one of the high pagoda-like
towers so familiar in Japanese paintings. I was dis-
illusioned. Instead of finding myself in beautiful rooms
for the enjoyment of marvellous views and sea breezes
I had to clamber over the roughest cob-webbed timbers.

210 LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "

One storey was connected with another by a stair of
rude planking. Such pagodas were built only for their
military value as lookouts and for their dehghtful appear-
ance from the outside.

The town now enjoyed as a park of more than ten acres
the grounds of a subsidiary residence of the daimyo. The
magnificent trees, with lakes, rivulets and hills fashioned
with infinite art,' and the background of natural hiU and
woodland, made in all a possession which exhibited the
delectable possibilities of Japanese gardening. An occa-
sional electric light amid the trees gave an effect in the
evening in which Japanese delight. Some of the old carp
which dashed up to the bridges when they heard our foot-
steps seemed to be not far short of 3 ft. long.

Except for a small patch of sugar cane in Shidzuoka —
it is grown practically on the sea beach where it is visible
from the express — the visitor to Japan may never see
sugar cane until Shikoku is reached. The value of the
crop in the whole island is about 800,000 yen. The tall cane
is conspicuous alongside the more diminutive rice. In this
prefecture an experiment is being made'in growing olives.

Kagawa is remarkable in having had until lately 30,000
pond reservoirs for the irrigation of rice fields. Under the
new system of rice-field adjustment many of the ponds are
joined together. Because in Shikoku flat tracts of land or
tracts that can be made flat are limited in number the
farmers have to be content with small pieces of land.
The average area of farm in Kagawa outside the
mountainous region is less than two acres. When the
farms are near the sea, as they commonly are, the agri-
culturists may also be fishermen.

The number of place names ending in ji (temple) pro-
claims the former flourishing condition of Buddhism.
Shikoku is a great resort of white-clothed pilgrims. Some-
times it is a solitary man whom one sees on the road,
sometimes a company of men, occasionally a family. Not
seldom the pilgrim or his companion is manifestly suffering
from some affection which the pilgrimage is to cvie. In

1 It is quite possible that the trees had also come into their positions
artificially. There are no more skilful tree movers than the Japanese.

THE PILGRIMS AND THE SHRINE 211

the old days it was not unusual to send the victim of
" the shameful disease " or of an incurable ailment on a
pilgrimage from shrine to shrine or temple to temple. He
was not expected to return. In Shikoku there are eighty-
eight temples to Buddha and the founder of the Shingon
sect, and it is estimated that it would mean a 760 miles'
journey to visit them all.

We went off our route at one point where my companion
wished to visit a gorgeous shrine. A guidebook said that
people flocked there " by the milUon," but what I was told
was that last year's attendance was 80,000. The street
leading to the approach to the shrine was in a series of steps.
On either side were the usual shops with piled-up memen-
toes in great variety and of no Uttle ingenuity, and also, on
spikes, little stacks of rin — the old copper coin with a square
hole through the middle — into which the economical
devotee takes care to exchange a few sen. We climbed to
the shrine when twilight was coming on. At the point
where the series of street steps ended there began a new
series of about a thousand steps belonging to the shrine.
A thousand granite steps may be tiring after a hot
day's travel in a kuruma. All the way up to the shrine
there were granite pillars almost brand new, first short
ones, then taller, then taller still, and after these a few
which topped the tallest. They were conspicuously in-
scribed with the names of donors to the shrine. A small
pillar was priced at 10 yen. What the big, bigger and
biggest cost I do not know. I turned from the pillars
to the stone lanterns. " They burn cedar wood, I believe,"
said my companion. But soon afterwards I saw a man
working at them with a length of electric-light wire.

The great shrine was impressive in the twilight. There
was a platform near, and from it we looked down from the
tree-covered heights through the growing darkness. Where
the Ughts of the town twinkled there was a subsidiary shrine.
A bare-headed, kimono-clad sailor stepped forward near
us and bowed his head to some semblance of deity down
there. Various fishermen had brought the anchors of
their ships and the oars of their boats to show forth their
thankfulness for safety at sea. In the murkiness I was

212 LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "

just able to pick out the outlines of a bronze horse which
stands at the shrine, "as a sort of scape - goat," my
companion explained. "It is probably Buddhist," he
said ; " but you can never be sure ; these priests embellish
the history of their temples so."

It was at the inn in the evening that someone told me
that in the town which is dependent on the shrine there
were " a hundred prostitutes, thirty geisha and some
waitresses." Late at night I had a visit from a man in a
position of great responsibility in the prefecture. He was
at a loss to know what could be done for moraUty.
" Religion is not powerful," he said, " the schools do not
reach grown-up people, the young men's societies are weak,
many sects and new moralities are attacking our people,
and there are many cheap books of a low class."

Next day I laid this view before a group of landlords.
They did not reply for a Uttle and my skilful interpreter
said, " they are thinking deeply." At length one of them
delivered himself to this effect : " Landowners hereabouts
are mostly of a base sort. They always consider things
from a material and personal point of view. But if they
are attacked and made to act more for the public good it
may have an effect on rural conditions which are now low."

I enquired about the new sects of Buddhism and
Shintoism, for there had been pointed out to me in some
villages " houses of new religions." " New religions in
many varieties are coming into the villages," I was told,
" and extravagant though they may be are influencing
people. The adherents seem to be moral and modest,
and they pay their taxes promptly. There is a so-called
Shinto sect which was started twenty years ago by an
ignorant woman. It has believers in every part of Japan.
It is rather communistic." ' None of the landlords who
talked with me believed in the possibility of a " revival
of Buddhism." One of them noted that " people educated
in the early part of Meiji are most materialistic. It is a
sorrowful circumstance that the ofiicials ask only materi-
alistic questions of the villagers."

1 It has recently come into collision with the authorities. Another
sect with Shinto ideas was also started by a woman.

SAKE ETIQUETTE 213

I asked one of the landlords about his tenants. He said
that his "largest tenant" had no more than 1'3 tan of
paddy. It was explained that " tenants are obedient to
the landowner in this prefecture." Under the system of
official rewards which exists in Japan, 1,086 persons in the
prefecture had been " rewarded " by a kind of certificate
of merit and nine with money — to the total value of 26 yen.

When I drew attention to the fact that the manufacture
of sak& and soy seemed to be frequently in the hands of
landowners it was explained to me that formerly this was
their industry exclusively. Even now " whereas an
ordinary shop-keeper is required by etiquette to say
' Thank you ' to his customer, a purchaser of sak& or soy
says ' Thank you ' to the shop-keeper,"

The flower arrangement in my room in the inn consisted
of an effective combination of Jiagi (Lespedeza bicolor, a
leguminous plant which is grown for cattle and has been
a favourite subject of Japanese poetry), a cabbage, a rose,
a begonia and leaf and a fir branch.

A landowner I chatted with in the train showed me that
it was a serious matter to receive the distinction of
growing the millet for use at the Coronation. One of his
friends who was growing 5 sho, the actual value of which
might be 50 or 60 sen, was spending on it first and last
about 3,000 yen.

I enquired about the diversions of landowners. It is
easy, of course, to have an inaccurate impression of the
extent of their leisure. Only about 1 per cent, have more
than 25 acres.' Therefore most of these men are either
farmers themselves or must spend a great deal of time
looking after their tenants. Still, some landowners are
able to take things rather easily. The landowners I
interrogated marvelled at the open-air habits of Enghsh
landed proprietors. They were greatly surprised when I
told them of a countess who is a grandmother but thinks
nothing of a canter before breakfast. The mark of being
well off was often to stay indoors or at any rate within
garden walls, which necessarily enclose a very small area.
(Hence the fact that one object of Japanese gardening
1 See Appendix XLVII.

214 LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "

is to suggest a much larger space than exists.) A good
deal of time is spent " in appreciating fine arts." Cere-
monial tea drinking still claims no small amount of
attention. (In many gardens and in the grounds of hotels
of any pretensions one comes on the ostentatiously humble
chamber for Cha-no-yu.) No doubt there is among many
landowners a considerable amount of drinking of something
stronger than tea, and not a few men sacrifice freely to
Venus. Perhaps the greatest claimant of all on the time of
those who have time to spare is the game of go, which is said
to be more difficult than chess. One cannot but remark
the comparatively pale faces of many landowners.

As we went along by the coast it was pointed out to me
that it was from this neighbourhood that some of the
most indomitable of the old-time pirates set sail on their
expeditions to ravage the Chinese coast. They visited
that coast all the way from Vladivostock, now Russian
(and like to be Japanese), to Saigon, now French. There
are many Chinese books discussing effectual methods of
repelling the pirates. In an official Japanese work I once
noticed, in the enumeration of Japanese rights in Taiwan
(Formosa), the naive claim that long ago it was visited by
Japanese pirates ! The Japanese fisherman is still an
intrepid person, and in villages which have an admixture
of fishing folk the seafarers, from their habit of following
old customs and taking their own way generally, are the
constant subject of rural reformers' laments.

I spent some time in a typical inland village. The
very last available yard of land was utilised. The cottages
stood on plots buttressed by stone, and only the well-to-do
had a yard or garden ; paddy came right up to the
foundations. Now that the rice was high no division
showed between the different paddy holdings. I noticed
here that the round, carefully concreted manure tank
which each farmer possessed had a reinforced concrete hood.
I asked a landowner who was in a comfortable position
what societies there were in his village. He mentioned a
society " to console old people and reward virtue." Then
there was the society of householders, such as is mentioned
in Confucius, which met in the spring and autumn, and ate

TREE GROOMING 215

and drank and discussed local topics " with open heart."
There were sometimes quarrels due to sake. Indeed, some
villagers seemed to save up their differences until the house-
holders' meeting at its saki stage. At householders'
meetings where there was no sak& peace appeared to prevail.
The householders' meeting was a kind of informal village
assetably. That assembly itself ordinarily met twice a
year. There were in the village, in addition to the house-
holders' organisation, the usual reservists' association, the
young men's society and agricultural association. As to
ko, from philanthropic motives my informant was a member
of no fewer than ten.

My host told me that he spent a good deal of time in
plajdng go, but in the shooting season (October 15 to April
15) he made trips to the hills and shot pheasants, hares,
pigeons and deer. In the garden of his house two gardeners
were stretched along the branches of a pine tree, nimbly
and industriously picking out the shoots in order to get that
bare appearance which has no doubt puzzled many a
Western student of Japanese tree pictures. Each man's
ladder — two lengths of bamboo with rungs tied on with
string — was carefully leant against a pole laid from the
ground through the branches. Many of the well-
cared-for trees in the gardens and public places of Japan
pass the winter in neat wrappings of straw.

I visited a farm-house and found the farmer making
baskets. When I was examining the winnowing machine
my companion reminded me smilingly that when he was a
boy he was warned never to turn the wheel of the winnowing
machine when the contrivance had no grain in it or a demon
might come out. There was a properly protected tank of
liquid manure and a well-roofed maniu-e house. The family
bath in an open shed was of a sort I had not seen before,
a kind of copper with a step up to it. Straw rope about
three-quarters of an inch in diameter was being made by
the farmer's son, a day's work being 40 yds. At another
farm a woman showed me the working of a rough loom
with which she could in a day make a score of mats worth
in all 60 sen. From the farmer's house I went to the
room of the young men's association and looked over its
16

216 LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "

library. I was impressed by the high level of civilisation
which this village seemed to exhibit in essentials.

When we continued our journey we saw two portable
water wheels by means of which water was being lifted into
a paddy. Each wheel was worked by a man who continu-
ally ascended the floats. The two men were able to leave
their wheels in turn for a rest, for a third man was stretched
on the ground in readiness for his spell. It seems that a
man can keep on the water tread-mill for an hour. The
two wheels together were lifting an amazing amount of
water at a great rate. When the pumping is finished one of
these light water wheels is easily carried home on a man's
shoulders.

Farther on I saw in a dry river bed a man sieving gravel
in an ingenious way. The trouble in sieving gravel is that if
the sieve be filled to its capacity the shaking soon becomes
tiring. This man had a square sieve which when lying on
the ground was attached at one side by two ropes to a
firmly fixed tripod of poles. When the sieve was filled the
labourer lifted it far enough away from the tripod for it to
be swinging on one side. Therefore when he shook the
sieve he sustained a portion only of its weight.

As we rode along I was told that the largest taxpayer in
the county " does not live in idleness but does many good
works." The next largest taxpayer " labours every day
in the field." When I enquired as to the recreations of
moneyed men I was told " travelling, go and poem writing."

As we rode by the sea a trustworthy informant pointed
out to me an islet where he said the young men have the
young women in common and " give permission for them to
marry." There is a house in which the girls live together
at a particular time and are then free from the attentions
of the youths. Children born are brought up in the families
of the mothers but there is some infanticide. In another
little island oft the coast there are only two classes of people,
the seniors and the juniors. Any person senior to any other
" may give him orders and call him by his second name."
(The surname comes first in Japanese names.)

Our route led us along the track of the new railway line
which was penetrating from Kagawa into Ehime. Not

A "BASHA" STORY 217

for the first time on my journeys was I told of the corrupt-
ing influence exerted on the countryside by the imported
" navvies," if our Western name may be apphed to men
who in figure and dress look so little hke the big fellows
who do the same kind of work in England. Although
these navvies were a rough lot and our ancient basha (a
kind of four-wheeled covered carriage) was a thing for
mirth, we met with no incivihty as we picked our way
among them for a mile or two. I was a witness indeed of
a creditable incident. A handcart fuUof earth was being
taken along the edge of the roadway, with one man in the
shafts and another pushing behind. Suddenly a wheel
slipped over the side of the roadway, the cart was canted
on its axle, the man in the shafts received a jolt and the
cargo was shot out. Had our sort of navvies been con-
cerned there would have been words of heat and colour.
The Japanese laughed.

The reference to our venerable basha reminds me of a well-
known story which was once told me by a Japanese as a
specimen of Japanese humour. A basha, I may explain,
has rather the appearance of a vehicle which was evolved
by a Japanese of an economical turn after hearing a de-
scription of an omnibus from a foreigner who spoke very
little Japanese and had not been home for forty years.
The body of the vehicle is just high enough and the
seats just wide enough for Japanese. So the foreigner
continually bumps the roof, and when he is not bump-
ing the roof he has much too narrow a seat to sit
on. Sometimes the basha has springs of a sort and some-
times it has none. But springs would avail little on the
rural roads by which many basha travel. The only toler-
able place for Mr. Foreigner in a bashais one of the top corner
seats behind the driver, for the traveller may there throw an
arm round one of the uprights which support the roof. If
at an unusually hard bump he should lose his hold he is
saved from being cast on the floor by the responsive bodies
of his polite and sympathetic fellow-travellers who are em-
bedded between him and the door. The tale goes that a
tourist who was serving his term in a basha was perplexed
to find that the passengers were charged, some first-, some

218 LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND " BASHA "

second- and some third-class fare. While he cliong to his
upright and shook with every lurch of the conveyance
this problem of unequal fares obsessed him. It was like
the persistent " punch-in-the-presence-of-the-passengare."
What possible advantage, he pondered, could he as first
class be getting over the second and the second class over
the third ? At length at a steep part of the road the vehicle
stopped. The driver came round, opened the door, and
bowing politely said : " Honourable first-class passengers
will graciously condescend to keep their seats. Second-
class passengers will be good enough to favour us by
walking. Third-class passengers will kindly come out and
push." And push they did, no doubt, kimonos roUed
up thighwards, with good humour, sprightliness and
cheerful grunts, as is the way with willing workers in Japan.

CHAPTER XXV

" special tribes "

(ehAme)

A frank basis of reality. — ^Meebdith

In the prefecture of Ehime our journey was still by basha
or kuruma and near the sea. The first man we talked with
was a guncho who said that " more than half the villages
contained a strong character who can lead." He told us
of one of the new religions which taught its adherents to
do some good deed secretly. The people who accepted this
religion mended roads, cleaned out ponds and made offerings
at the graves of persons whose names were forgotten. I
think it was this man who used the phrase, " There is a
shortage of religions."

I had not before noticed wax trees. They are slighter than
apple trees, but often occupy about the same space as the
old-fashioned standard apple. The clusters of berries have
some resemblance to elderberries and would turn black if
they were not picked green.' Occasionally we saw fine
camphor trees. Alas, owing to the high price of camphor,
some beautiful specimens near shrines, where they were as
imposing as cr3^tomeria, had been sacrificed.

I began to observe the dreadful destruction wrought in
the early ear stage of rice not by cold but by wind. The
wind knocks the plants against one another and the friction
generates enough heat to arrest further development. The
crops affected in this way were grey in patches and looked
as if hot water had been sprayed over them. In one
county the loss was put as high as 90 per cent. Happily
farmers generally sow several sorts of rice. Therefore
paddies come into ear at different times.

' For an account of a vegetable wax factory, see Appendix XLVIII.

219

220 "SPECIAL TRIBES"

The heads of millet and the threshed grain of other up-
land crops were drying on mats by the roadside, for in the
areas where land is so much in demand there is no other
space available. Sesame, not unlike snapdragon gone to
seed, only stronger in build, was set against the houses.
On the growing crops on the uplands dead stalks and
chopped straw were being used as mulch.

I noticed that implements seemed always to be well
housed and to be put away clean. Handcarts, boats and
the stacks of poles used in making frameworks for drying
rice were protected from the weather by being thatched
over.

We continued to see many white- clad pilgrims and every-
where touring students, as often afoot as on bicycles. I
noted from the registers at many village offices that the
number of young men who married before performing their
military service seemed to be decreasing. In one com-
munity, where there were two priests, one Tendai and the
other Shingon, neither seemed to count for much. One
was very poor, and cultivated a small patch near his temple;
the other had a little more than a cko. The custom was
for the farmers to present to their temple from 5 to 10 sho
of rice from the harvest.

In connection with the question of improved implements
I noticed that a reasonably efficient winnowing machine in
use by a comfortably-oft tenant was forty-nine years old —
that is, that it dated back to the time of the Shogun. The
secondary industry of this farmer was dwarf- plant growing.
He had also a loom for cotton-cloth making. There were
in his house, in addition to a Buddhist shrine, two Shinto
shrines. After leaving this man I visited an ex-teacher who
had lost his post at fifty, no doubt through being unable to
keep step with modern educational requirements. He had
on his wall the lithograph of Pestalozzi and the children
which I saw in many school-houses.

On taking the road again I was told that the local land-
lords had held a meeting in view of the losses of tenants
through wind. Most had agreed to forgo rents and to
help with artificial manure for next year. I found taro
being grown in paddies or under irrigation. Not only the

THE "ETA" VILLAGE 221

tubers of the taro but its finer stalks are eaten. I saw
gourds cut into long lengths narrower than apple rings and
put out to dry. I also noticed orange trees a century old
which were still producing fruit. Boys were driving iron
hoops — the native hoop was of bamboo — and one of the
hoop drivers wore a piece of red cloth stitched on his shoul-
der, which indicated that he was head of his class. One
missed a dog bounding and barking after the hoop drivers.
Sometimes at the doors of houses I noticed dogs of the lap-
dog type which one sees in paintings or of the wolf type
to which the native outdoor dog belongs. The cats were as
ugly as the dogs and no plumper or happier looking. When
I patted a dog or stroked a cat the act attracted attention.

We saw a good deal of hinoki (ground cjrpress), the wood
of which is still used at Shinto festivals for making fire by
friction.

We were able to visit an Eta village or rather oaza.
Whether the Eta are largely the descendants of captives of
an early era or of a low class of people who on the intro-
duction of Buddhism in the seventh or eighth century were
ostracised because of their association with animal eating,
animal slaughter, working in leather and grave digging is in
dispute. No doubt they have absorbed a certain number of
fugitives from higher grades of the population, broken
samurai, ne'er-do-weels and criminals. The situation as
the foreigner discovers it is that all over Japan there are
hamlets of what are called " special tribes." In 1876,
when distinctions between them and Japanese generally
were officially abolished, the total number was given as
about a million. Most of these peculiar people, perhaps
three-quarters of them, are known as Eta. But whether
they are known as Eta or Shuku, or by some other name,
ordinary Japanese do not care to eat with them, marry
with them or even talk with them. In the past Eta have
often been prosperous, and many are prosperous to-day,
but a large number are still restricted to earning a living as
butchers and skin and leather workers, and grave diggers.
The members of these "special tribes," believing themselves
to be despised without cause, usually make some effort to
hide the fact that they are Eta.

222 "SPECIAL TRIBES"

Shuku seem to be living principally in hamlets of a score

or so of houses in the vicinity of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara,

and are often travelling players, or, like some Eta,

skilled in making tools and musical instruments. There

seems to be a half Shuku or intermarried class. Many

prostitutes are said to be Shuku or Eta. I was told that

most of the girls in the prostitutes' houses of Shimane

prefecture are from " special tribes," and that they are

" preferred by the proprietors " because, as I was gravely

informed, " they do not weary of their profession and are

therefore more acceptable to customers." As prostitutes

are frequently married by their patrons, it is believed that

not a few women from " special villages " are taken to wife

without their origin being known. Unwitting marriage with

an Eta woman has long been a common motif in fiction

and folk story. Many members of the "special tribes"

go to Hokkaido and there pass into the general body

of the population. The folk of this class are " despised,"

I was told by a responsible Japanese, " not so much for-

themselves as for what their fathers and grandfathers

did." The country people undoubtedly treat them more

harshly than the townspeople, but a man of the " special

tribes " is often employed as a watchman of fields or

forests. I was warned that it was judicious to avoid using

the word Eta or Shuku in the presence of common people'

lest one might be addressing by chance a member of the

" special tribes."

Except that the houses of the village we were visiting
looked possibly a trifle more primitive than those of the
non-Eta population outside the oaza, I did not discern
anything different from what I saw elsewhere. The people
were of the Shinshu sect ; there was no Shinto shrine.
At the public room I noticed the gymnastic apparatus of
the " fire defenders." The hamlet was traditionally 300
years old and one family was still recognised as chief.
According to the constable, who eagerly imparted the
information, the crops were larger than those of neighbour-
ing villages " because the people, male and female, are
always diligent."

The man who was brought forward as the representative

CHARMS AGAINST AN EPIDEMIC 223

of the village was an ex-soldier and seemed a quiet, able and
self-respecting but sad human being. His house and
holding were in excellent order. None of his neighbours
smiled on us. Some I thought went indoors needlessly ;
a few came as near to glowering as can be expected in Japan.
I got the impression that the people were cared for but were
conscious of being " hauden doon " or kept at arm's length.'

Our next stop was for a rest in a fine garden, the effect
of which was spoilt in one place by a distressing life-size
statue of the owner's father. When we took to our
kuruma again we passed through a village at the approaches
to which thick straw ropes such as are seen at shrines had
been stretched across the road. Charms were attached.
The object was to keep off an epidemic.

The indigo leaves drjring on mats in front of some of the
cottages were a delight to the eye. There were also mats
covered with cotton which looked like fluffy cocoons. On
the telegraph wires, the poles of Avhich all oyer JapaiR take
short cuts ^through the paddies, swallows clustered as in
EnglanHTbut it is to the South Seas, not to Africa, that the
Japanese swallow migrates. When the telegraph was a
newer feature of the Japanese landscape than it is now
swallows on the wires were a favourite subject for young
painters.

We crossed a dry river bed of considerable width at a
place where the current had made an excavation in the
gravel, rocks and earth several yards deep. It was an
impressive illustration of the power of a heavy flood.

I found in one mountainous county that only about a
sixth_of_the_area was under cultivation. A responsible
man said : " This is a county of the biggest landlords and
the smallest tenants. Too many landowners are thinking
of themselves, so there arise sometimes severe conflicts.
Some 4,000 tenants have gone to Hokkaido." The conver-
sation got round to the young men's societies and I was
told a story of how an Eta village threatened by floods had
been saved by the young men of the neighbouring non-Eta
village working all night at a weakened embankment.

* For further particulars of Eta in Japan and America, see Appendix
XLIX.

224 "SPECIAL TRIBES"

Some days later an Eta deputation came to the village and
" with tears in their eyes gave thanks for what had been
done." The comment of a Japanese friend was : "In the
present state of Japan hypocrisy may be valuable. The boys
and the Eta were at least exercising themselves in virtue."

Four villages in this county have among them eight
fish nurseries, the area of salt water enclosed being roughly
120 acres. I looked into several cottages where paper
making was going on.'

I also went into two cotton mills. In both there were
girls who were not more than eleven or twelve. " They
are exempted from school by national regulation because
of the poverty of their parents," ' I was told.

As we passed the open shop fronts of the village
barbers I saw that as often as not a woman was shaving
the customer or using the patent cUppers on him.

We looked at a big dam which an enterprising landowner
was constructing. Three hundred women were consoli-
dating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of
granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round
each block was a groove in which was a leather belt
with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope
was attached. When these ropes were extended the granite
block became the hub of a wheel of which the ropes were the
spokes . A number of women and girls took ropes apiece and
jerked them simultaneously, whereupon the granite block
rose in the air to the level of the rope pullers' heads. It was
then allowed to fall with a thud. After each thud the
pullers moved along a foot so that the block should drop on a
fresh spot. The gangs hauling at the rammers worked to the
tune of a plaintive ditty which went slowly so as to give
them plenty of breathing time. It was something like this :

Weep not.

Do not lament,

This world is as the wheel of a car.

If we live long,

We may meet again on the road.

1 See Appendix L.

' In 1918 net profits of 33 million yen were made by cotton factories.
The factories are anticipating sharp competition from China.

AN ALTERNATIVE TO CREMATORIA 225

None of the sturdy earth thumpers seemed to be over-
worked in the bracing air of the dam top, and they cer-
tainly looked picturesque with their white and blue towels
round their heads. Indeed, with all the singing and
movement, not to speak of the refreshment stalls, the scene
was not unlike a fair. When we got back to the road again
we passed through a well-watered rice district which was
equal to the production of heavy crops. Only three years
before it had been covered by a thick forest in which it
was not uncommon for robbers to lurk. The transforma-
tion had been brought about by the construction of a dam
in the hills somewhat similar to the one we had just
visited.

I could not but notice in this district the considerable
areas given up to grave-plots. No crematoria seemed to be
in use. There had been a newspaper proposal that in areas
where the population was very large in proportion to the
land available for cultivation the dead should be taken out
to sea. Where land is scarce one sees various expedients
practised so that every square foot shall be cropped. I
repeatedly found stacks of straw or sticks standing not on
the land but on a rough bridge thrown for the purpose over
a drainage ditch. In this district land had been recovered
from the sea.

CHAPTER XXVI

the story of the blind headman
(ehime)

The thing to do is to rise humorously above one's body which is the
veritable rebel, not one's mind. — ^Meredith

It is delightful to find so many things made of copper.
Copper, not iron, is in Japan the most ^valuable mineral
product after coal.' But there are drawbacks to a success-
ful copper industry. Several times as I came along by the
coast I heard how the farmers' crops had been damaged
by the fumes of a copper refinery. " There are four
copper refineries in Japan, who fighted very much with
the farmers," it was explained. The Department of
Agriculture is also the Department of Commerce and " it
was embarrassed by those battles." The upshot was that
one refinery moved to an island, another rebuilt its chimney
and the two others agreed to pay compensation because it
was cheaper than to instal a new system. The refinery
which had removed to an island seven miles oft the coast
I had been traversing had had to pay compensation as well
as remove. I saw an apparatus that it had put up among
rice fields to aid it in determining how often the wind was
carrjring its fumes there. The compensation which this
refinery was paying yearly amounted to as much as 75,000
yen. It had also been compelled to buy up 500 cho of the
complaining farmers' land. When we ascended by basha
into the mountains we looked down on a copper mine in a
ravine through which the river tumbled. The man who
had opened the original road over the pass had had the
beautiful idea of planting cherry trees along it so that the
traveller might enjoy the beauty of their blossoms in spring

1 See Appendix XXXVIII.
226

PATIENT ENDEAVOUR AND SKILFUL CULTURE 227

and their foliage and outlines the rest of the year. The
trees had attained noble proportions when the refinery
started work and very soon killed most of them. They
looked as if they had been struck by lightning.

Some miles farther on, wherever on the mountain-side
a little tract could be held up by walling, the chance of
getting land for cultivation had been eagerly seized. It
would be difficult to give an impression of the patient en-
deavour and skilful culture represented by the farming on
these isolated terraces held up by Galloway dykes. Else-
where the heights were tree-clad. In places, where the
trees had been destroyed by forest fires or had been cleared,
amazingly large areas had been closely cut over for forage.
One great eminence was a wonderful sight with its whole
side smoothed by the sickles of indomitable forage col-
lectors. In some spots " fire farming " had been or was
still being practised. Here and there the cultivation of
the shrubs grown for the production of paper-making bark
had displaced " fire farming." I saw patches of millet
and sweet potato which from the road seemed almost
inaccessible.

On the admirable main road we passed many pack ponies
carr3dng immense pieces of timber. Speaking of timber,
the economical method of preserving wood by charring is
widely practised in Japan. °T?he palisades around houses
and gardens and even the boards of which the walls or the
lower part of the walls of dwellings are constructed are
often charred. The effect is not cheerful. What does
have a cheerful and trim effect is a thing constantly under
one's notice, the habit of keeping carefully swept the un-
paved earth enclosed by a house and buildings as well as the
path or roadway to them. This careful sweeping is usually
regarded as the special work of old people. Even old ladies
in families of rank in Tokyo take pleasure in their daily task
of sweeping.

When we had crossed the pass and descended on the
other side and taken kuruma we soon came to a wide but
absolutely dry river bed. The high embankments on
either side and the width of the river bed, which, walking
behind our kuruma, it took us exactly four minutes to

228 THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN

cross, afforded yet another object lesson in the severity
of the floods that afflict the country. The rock- and
rubble-choked condition of the rivers inclines the traveller
to severe judgments on the State and the prefectures for
not getting on faster with the work of afforestation ; but
it is only fair to note that in many places hillsides were
pointed out to me which, bare a generation ago, are now
covered with trees. Within a distance of twenty-five miles
hill plantations were producing fruit to a yearly value of
half a million yen. As for the cultivation on either side of
the roadway, along which our kurumaya were trotting us,
I could not see a weed anywhere.

A favourite rural recreation in Ehime, as in Shimane on
the mainland, is bull fighting. It is not, however, fighting
with bulls but between bulls : the sport has the redeeming
featTire that the animals are not turned loose on one another
but are held all the time by their owners by means of the
rope attached to the nose ring. The rope is gripped quite
close to the bull's head. The result of this measure of
control is, it was averred, that a contest resolves itself
into a struggle to decide not which bull can fight better but
which animal can push harder with his head. That the
bulls are occasionally injured there can be no doubt. The
contests are said to last from fifteen to twenty minutes and
are decided by one of the combatants turning tail. There
is a good deal of gambling on the issue. In another pre-
fecture of Shikoku the rustics enjoy struggles between
muzzled dogs. A taste for this sport is also cultivated in
Akita. A certain amount of dog and cock fighting goes on
in Tokyo.

At an inn there was an evident desire to do us honour by
providing a special dinner. One bowl contained trans-
parent fish soup. Ljdng at the bottom was_a_glass;^e;ge
staring up balefuUy at me. (The head, especially the eye,
of a fish is reckoned the daintiest morsel.) There was a
relish consisting of grapes in mustard. A third dish pre-
sented an entire squid. I passed honourable dishes
numbers two and three and drank the fish soup through
clenched teeth and with averted gaze.

I interrogated several chief constables on the absence

OFFENCES AGAINST WOMEN 229

of assaults on women from the lists of crimes in the rural
statistics I had collected. Various explanations were
offered to me : if there were cases of assault they were kept
secret for the credit of the woman's family ; no prosecution
could be instituted except at the instance of the woman,
or, if married, the woman's husband ; women did not go
out much alone ; the number of cases was not in fact as
large as might be imagined, because the people were well
behaved. An official who had had police experience in
the north of Japan declared that the south was more
" moral and more civilised and had higher tastes." In
Ehime, for example, there was very little illegitimacy and
fewer children still-born than in any other prefecture.
Nevertheless four offences against women had occurred in
villages in Ehime within the preceding twelve months.

One of the most interesting stories of rural regeneration
I heard was told me by a blind man who had become head-
man of his village at the time of the war with Russia. His
life had been indecorous and he had gradually lost his
sight, and he took the headmanship with the wish to make
some atonement for his careless years. This is his
story :

" Although I thought it important to advance the eco-
nomic condition of the village it was still more important
to promote friendship. As the interests of landowners and
tenants was the same it was necessary to bring about
an understanding. I began by asking landowners to contri-
bute a proportion of the crops to make a fund. I was
blamed by only fourteen out of two hundred. But the
landowners who did blame me blamed me severely, so much
so that my family ' were uneasy. I went from door to
door with a bag collecting rice as the priests do. My
eccentric behaviour was reported in the papers. The
anxiety of my household and relatives grew. My children
were told at the school that their father was a beggar.
During the first harvest in which I collected I gathered
about 40 koku (about 200 bushels). In the fourth year a
hundred tenants came in a deputation to me. They said :
' This gathering of rice is for our benefit. But you gather

' That is, not only his household but his relatives.

230 THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN

from the landowners only. So please let us contribute
every year. Some of us will collect among ourselves and
bring the rice to you, so giving you no trouble.' I was very
pleased with that. But I did not express my pleasure.
I scolded them. I said : ' Your plan is good but you think
only of yourselves. You do not give the landowners their
due. When you bring your rent to them you choose in-
ferior rice. It is a bad custom.' I advised them to treat
their landowners with justice and achieve independence in
the relation of tenant and landowner. They were moved
by my earnestness.

" In the next year the tenants exerted themselves and
the landowners were pleased with them. Thus the relation
of landlord and tenant became better. The landowners
in their turn became desirous of showing a friendly feeling
toward the tenants. Some landlords came to me and said,
' If you wish for any money in order to be of service to the
tenants we will lend it to you without interest.' I received
some money. I lent money to tenants to buy manure and
cattle, to attack insect pests, to provide protection against
wind and flood and to help to build new dwellings nearer
their work. By these means the tenants were encouraged
and their welfare was promoted. The landlords were also
happier, for the rice was better and the land improved.
The landlords found that their happiness came from the
tenants. There was good feeling between them. The land-
lords began to help the tenants directly and indirectly.
Roads and bridges and many aids to cultivation were fur-
nished by the landlords. A body of landlords was consti-
tuted for these purposes and it collected money. My idea
was realised that the way of teaching the villages is to let
landlords and tenants realise that their interests agree and
they will become more friendly."

The co-operative credit society which the blind headman
established not only buys and sells for its members in the
ordinary way but hires land for division among the humbler
cultivators. One of the departments of the society's work
is the collection of villagers' savings. They are gathered
every Sunday by school-children. One lad, I found from
his book, had collected on a particular Sunday 5 sen each —

ECONOMIC AND MORAL DIARIES 231

5 sen is a penny — from two houses and 10 sen each from
another two dwellings. The next Sunday he had received
5 sen from one house, 10 sen from two houses, 80 sen and
50 sen from others and a whole yen from the last house on
his list. The subscriber gets no receipt but sees the lad
enter in his book the amount handed over to him, and the
next Sunday he sees the stamp of the bank against the sum.
Some 390 householders out of the 497 in the village hand
over savings to the boy and girl collectors, whose energy
is stimulated with 1 per cent, on the sums they gather.
In five years the Sunday collections have amassed 60,000
yen. The previous year had been marked by a bad harvest
and large sums had been drawn out of the bank, but there
was still a sum of 14,000 yen in hand.

In this village there had been issued one of the economic
and moral diaries mentioned in an earlier chapter. The
diary of this village has two spaces for every day — that is, the
economic space and the moral space. The owner of this book
had to do two good deeds daily, one economic and the other
moral, and he had to enter them up. Further, he had to
hand in the book at the end of the year to the earnest
village agricultural and moral expert who devised the
diary and carefully tabulates the results of twelve months'
economic and moral endeavour. One might think that the
scheme would break down at the handing in of the diary
stage, but I was assured that there were good reasons for
believing that a considerable proportion of the 440 persons
who had taken out diaries would return them.

There is an old custom by which Buddhist believers, in
companies of a dozen or so, meet to eat and drink together.
As a good deal is eaten and drunk the gatherings are costly.
Our blind headman met the difficulty of expense in his
village by getting the companies of believers to cultivate
together in their spare time about three acres of land. His
object was to associate religion and agriculture and so to
dignify farming in the eyes of young men. He also wished
to provide an object lesson in the results of good cultivation.
The profits proved to be, as he anticipated, so considerable
as to leave a balance after defraying the cost of the social
gathering. The headman prevailed on the cultivators to
17

232 THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN

keep accurate accounts and they made plain some unex-
pected truths : as for example, that a tan of paddy did not
need the labour of a man for more than twenty-three days
of ten hours, and that the net income from such an area
was a little more than 16 yen, and that thus the return for a
day's labour was 73 sen. It was demonstrated, therefore,
that labour was recompensed very well, and that instead
of farming being " the most unprofitable of industries " —
for in Japan as in the West there are sinners against the
light who say this — it was reasonably profitable.

But if rice called for only twenty-three days' labour per
tan — nearly all the farmers' land was paddy^ — and the
whole holding numbered only a few tan, it was also plain
that there were many days in the year when the farmer was
not fully employed. From this it was easy to proceed to
the conviction that the available time should be utilised
either in secondary employments, or in, say, draining, which
would reduce the quantity of manure needed on the land.
So the farmers began to think about drainage and the
means of economising labour,, They began to realise how
time was wasted owing to most farmers working not only
scattered, but irregularly shaped pieces of land. So the
rice lands were adjusted, and everybody was found to have
a trifle more land than he held before, and the fields were
better watered and more easily cultivated. Only from
sixteen to seventeen days' labour instead of twenty-
three were now needed per tan ' and the crops were
increased. There is now no exodus from this progressive
village.

Concerning his blindness the headman said that it was
more profitable for him to hear than to see, for by sight
" energy might be diverted." He had recited in every
prefecture his personal experience of rural reform. He
asserted that while conditions varied in every prefecture,
there was, generally speaking, labour on the land for no
more than 200 days in the year. He deplored the dis-
appearance of some home employments. He did not

1 Adding to the 17 days' labour for the rice orop, 13 days' labour
for the suooaeding barley orop, the total was 30 days' labour per tan against
the general Japan average of 39 days per tan.

A HOT-SPRING CATASTROPHE 233

approve of the condition of things in the north where
women worked as much in the fields as their husbands
and brothers. Women were " so backward and con-
servative." The biggest obstacles to agricultural progress
were old women. To introduce a secondary industry was
to take women from the fields.

I spoke with an agricultural expert, one of whose dicta
was that " students at normal schools who come from
town families are not so clever as students from farmers'
families." He told me that 10,000 young men in his
county had sworn " to act in the way most fitting to
youths of a military state [sic], to buy and use national
products as far as possible and so to promote national
industry."

What was wrong with some farming, according to an
official of a county agricultural association whom I met
later, was that the farmers cultivated too intensively.
They used too much " artificial." A prefectural official,
speaking of the possibility of extending the cultivated area
in Japan, said that in Ehime there were 6,000 cho which
might be made into paddies if money were available.
As to afforestation, 100,000 yen a year, exclusive of salaries,
was spent in the prefecture. As a final piece of statistics
he mentioned that whereas ten years before pears were
grown only in a certain island of the prefecture, the
production of a single county was now valued at half a
million yen yearly,

I spent a night at a hot spring. It is said that the volume
of water is decreasing. What a situation for a town
which lives on a hot spring if the hot-water supply should
suddenly stop ! I heard of another hot-spring resort at
which the water is gradually cooling : it is warmed up
by secret piping.

I have not troubled my readers with many stories of the
jostling of past and present, but I noticed in an electric
street car at Matsuyama a peasant tr3dng to light his pipe
with ffint and tinder. As he did not succeed a fellow-
passenger offered him a match. He was so inexpert with it
that he still failed to get a light and he had to be handed
a cigarette stump.

234 THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN

In riding down to the port in the street car I borrowed
for a few moments a schoolboy's English reader. It seemed
rather mawkish. A book of Japanese history which I
was also allowed to look at was full of reproductions
of autographs of distinguished men. " They make the
impression very strong," I was told.

THE SOUTH-WEST OF JAPAN

CHAPTER XXVII

up-country oeatoey
(yamaguchi)

I have confidence, which began with hope and strengthens with
experience, that humanity is gaining in the stores of mind. — ^Meredith

The main street of an Inland Sea island we visited was
4 ft. wide. Because it was the eve of a festival the old folk
were at home " observing their taboo." The islander who
had been the first among the inhabitants to visit a foreign
country was only fifty. The local policeman made us a
gift of pears when we left.

At another primitive island querns were in use and
" ordinary families " were " only beginning to indulge in
tombstones." In contrast with this, the constable told
us that a small condensed-milk factory had been started.
(This constable was a fine, dignified-looking fellow, but so
poor that his toes were showing through his blue cloth
tabi.) The condensed-milk factory must have been
responsible for some surprises to the cows when they were
first milked in its interests, I heard a tale of the first
milking of an elderly cow. She had ploughed paddies,
carried hay and other things and had drawn a cart. But
it took five men and a woman to persuade her that to be
milked into a clay pot was a reasonable thing.

The third island we explored lies in such a situation in
the Inland Sea that sailing ships used to be glad to shelter
under it while waiting for a favourable wind. Someone had
the evil thought of providing it with prostitutes, and, until
steam began to take the place of sails, the number of these
women established in the island was large. Even now,

235

236 UP-COUNTRY ORATORY

although the whole population numbers only a hundred
families, there are thirty women of bad character. These
poor creatures were conspicuous because of their bright
clothing and dewomanised look. A scrutiny of the islanders
old and young yielded the impression that the whole place
was suffering from its peculiar traffic. There were two
houses, one for registering the women and the other for
investigating their state of health, and the purpose of the
buildings was bluntly proclaimed on the nameboards at
their doors.

When we got out to sea again the newest Japanese
battleship doing her trials was pointed out to me, but I
was more interested in a large fishing boat running before
the wind. A sturdy woman was at the helm and her naked
young family was sprawling about the craft.

Someone spoke of villagers of the mainland " failing to
realise that they now possessed the privilege of self-
government." I was reminded of the pleasant way of the
headman of a village assembly in the Loochoos, Japan's
oldest outlying possession. He assembles or used to
assemble his colleagues in his courtyard and appear there
with a draft of proposed legislation. They bowed and
departed and the Bill had become an Act.

Although we were already within the territorial waters of
Hiroshima prefecture, we determined not to make the
mainland at once but to stay the night at the famous
island which is called both Miyajima (shrine island) and
Itsukushima (taboo island), and is considered to be one of
the three most noteworthy sights in Japan. Photographs
and drawings of the shrine with its red colonnades on piles
by the shore and its big red torii standing in the sea are as
familiar as representations of Fuji. It used to be the cus-
tom to prevent as far as possible births and deaths occurring
on the island. Even now, funerals, dogs and kuruma are
prohibited. The iron lanterns of the shrine and galleries
and a hundred more in the pine tree-studded approaches
are undoubtedly " a most magnificent spectacle at full tide
on a moonless night " ; but what of the subservience
to the profitable foreign tourist seen in this shrine
notice ? —

THE GODS AND THE SIRENS 287

Zori (straw sandals), geta (wooden pattens) and all foot-
gear except shoes and boots are forbidden.

One is attracted by the idea of listening to music and
watching dances which came from afar in the seventh or
eighth centuries, but the business-like tariff,

Ordinary music, 12 sen to 5 yen.

Special music and dance, 10 yen and upwards,

Lighting all lanterns, 9 yen,

is calculated to take one out of the atmosphere of Hearn's
dreams. The deities of the shrine get along as best they
can with the raucous sirens of the tourist steamers, the din
of the motor boats and the boom of the big guns which are
hidden at the back of the island and make of Miyajima
and its vicinity " a strategic zone " in which photography,
sketching or the too assiduous use of a notebook is for-
bidden. Alas, I had myself arrived in a steamer which
blew its siren loudly, and in the morning I crossed from
the holy isle to the mainland in a motor launch.

The name of Yamaguchi prefecture, which is at the
extreme end of the mainland and has the sea to the south,
the east and the north, is not so familiar as the name of its
port, Shimoneseki. It was mentioned to me that the
farmers of Yamaguchi worked a smaller number of days
than in Ehime, possibly only a hundred in the year. The
comment of my companion, who had visited a great deal of
rural Japan, was that 150 full days' work was the average
for the whole country.'

I was told that here as elsewhere there was an unsound
tendency to turn sericulture from a secondary into a
primary industry. " Experts are not always expert,"
confessed an official. " Our farmers have had bitter
experience. Experts come who have learnt only from
books or in other districts, so they give unsuitable counsel.
Then they leave the prefecture for other posts before the
results of their unwisdom are apparent."

The same official told me of a " little famine " in one
county which had imprudently concentrated its attention

1 See Appendix XII.

238 UP-COUNTRY ORATORY

on the production of grape fruit to the annual value of about
a million yen. When a storm came one spring there was
almost a total loss. " The river and the sea were covered
with fruit, fishing was interfered with, and the county town
complained of the smell of the rotting fruit." It seems
that many of the suffering orange growers were samurai
who found fruit farming a more gentlemanly pursuit than
the management of paddies. Like rural amateurs every-
where, " some of them would do better if they knew more
about the working of the land."

Rice was being assailed by a pest which survived in the
straw stack and had done damage in the prefecture to the
amount of 30,000 yen.

In this prefecture and two others during our tour my
companion delivered addresses to farmers under the
auspices of the National Agricultural Association. The
burden of his talk was their duty as agriculturists in the
new conditions which were opening for the nation. His
three audiences numbered about 700, 1,000 and 1,500.
They were composed largely of picked men. At the first
gathering the audience squatted ; at the next chairs were
provided ; at the third there were school forms with
backs. What I particularly noticed was the easy-going
way in which the meetings were conducted. No gathering
began exactly at the time announced, although one of the
audiences had been encouraged to be in time by the promise
of a gift of mottoes to the first hundred arrivals. At each
meeting the Governor of the prefecttire was the first
speaker. At one meeting the Governor arrived about
8.80 a.m., made his speech and departed. When my friend
had been introduced to various people in the anteroom,
had drunk tea and had smoked and chatted a little, he was
taken to the platform half an hour or three quarters after
the conclusion of the Governor's speech. Nothing had
happened at the meeting in the interval. The idea was
that the wait would help the audience's digestion of the
speech it had had and the speech it was going to have.
There was no formal introduction of the orator. He just
mounted the platform and spoke for two hours.

At the second meeting the Governor awaited our arrival

SCHOOL SHRIN'Ji FOR EJIPE ROE'S PORTRAIT, p. 113

THE AUTHOR ADDRESSIifG, THEOaGH AN IN-TERPRBTER, LAFCADIO HEARN

DEATH-DAY JIEETINO AT JIATSUE v.-jr,3
•238]

A PEASANT PaOPBIBTOK'S HOUSE, p. 378

GRAYESTOKES BEASSEMBLBD APTEB PADDT ADJUSTMENT, p. 72

A JAPANESE PUBLIC MEETING 289

but " went on " alone. The star speaker meanwhile re-
freshed himself in the anteroom with tea, tobacco and con-
versation as before. In a few minutes the Governor, having
done his turn, rejoined us, and my friend proceeded to
the meeting to deUver his speech, the Governor taking his
departure.

At the third meeting the Governor and the speaker of
the day did enter the hall together, but before the Governor
had finished his introductory harangue my companion took
himself oft to the anteroom to refresh himself with a cigar
and a chat. When the Governor concluded and returned
to the anteroom there was conversation for a few minutes,
and then my friend and his Excellency went into the
meeting together. This time the Governor stayed to the
end.

In his three speeches my friend said many moving things
and his audiences were appreciative. But no one pre-
sumed to interrupt with applause. At the end, however,
there was a hearty round of hand-clapping, now a general
custom at public gatherings. On the conclusion of each
of his addresses the orator stepped down from the platform
and made off to the hall, for no one dreamt of asking ques-
tions. When he was gone an official expressed the thanks
of the audience and there was another round of applause.
Then everybody connected with the arrangement of the
meeting gathered in the anteroom and one after the other
made appreciative speeches and bows. I marvelled at the
orator's toughness. Before he went on the platform he had
been pestered with unending introductions and beset by
conversation. But I do not know that my friend felt any
strain. Nor did the fashion in which the speakers wandered
on and off the platform, and thus, according to our notions,
did their utmost to damp the enthusiasm of the meetings,
seem to have any such effect. Once in an oculist's con-
sulting clinic in Tokyo I was struck by the fact that when
water was squirted into the eyes of a succession of patients
of both sexes and various ages, they did not wince as
Western people would have done.

I was told that school fees go up a little when the
price of rice is high ; also of the " negatively good " effects

240 UP-COUNTRY ORATORY

of young men's associations. During the period of our
tour efforts were being made to systematise these organisa-
tions. The Department of Agriculture wanted a farmer
at the head of each society, the War Ofl&ce an ex-soldier.
There can be no doubt that the militarists have been doing
their best to give the societies the mental attitude of the
army.

In the country we were entering, the horse had taken the
place of the ox as the beast of burden. Two men of some
authority in the prefecture agreed that it was difficult to
think of tracts in the south-west that would be suitable for
cattle grazing. There was certainly no " square ri where
the price of land was low enough to keep sheep." As to
cattle breeding and forestry, one of them must give way.
It was necessary to keep immense areas under evergreen
wood for the defence of the country against floods. With
regard to the areas available for afforestation, for cattle
keeping and for cultivation respectively, it was necessary
to be on one's guard against " experts " who were disposed
to claim all available land for their specialties.

When we took to an automobile for the first stage of our
long journey through Yamaguchi and Shimane — the rail-
way came no farther than the city of Yamaguchi — I noticed
that just as the bridges are often without parapets, the
roads winding round the cliffs were, as in Fukushima,
unprotected by wall or rail. This was due, no doubt, to
considerations of economy, to a widely diffused sense of
responsibility which makes people look after their own
safety, and also, in some degree, to stout Japanese nerves.
That our driver's nerves were sound enough was shown by
the speed at which he drove the heavy car round sharp
corners and down slippery descents where we should have
dropped a few hundred feet had we gone over.

At our first stopping-place I saw a photograph showing
a Shinshu priest engaged with the girl pupils of a Buddhist
school in tree planting. Our talk here was about the low
incomes on which people contrive to live. A little more
than a quarter of a century ago the family of a friend of
mine, now of high rank, was living in a county town on 5
yen a month ! There were two adults and three children.

THE SEALED ENVELOPE 841

Rent was 1*20 yen and rice came to 1*80 yen. Even to-day
an ex-Minister may have only 1,500 yen a year. Many
ex-Governors are living quietly in villages. We went to
call upon one of them who was getting great satisfaction
out of his few tan. Among other things he told us was
that there were five doctors and one midwife in the com-
munity. These doctors do not possess a Tokyo qualifica-
tion. They have qualified by being taught by their fathers
or by some other practitioner, and they are entitled to
practise in their own village and in, perhaps, a neighbouring
one.

It was thoughtless of me, after inquiring about the
doctors, to ask about the gravedigger. I was told that
when there was no member of a " special tribe " available
it was the duty of neighbours to dig graves. A com-
munity's displeasure was marked by neighbours refraining
from helping to dig an unpopular person's grave. (One
might have expected to hear that such a grave would be
dug with alacrity.) Families which had run counter to
public opinion had had to " apologise " before they could
get neighbourly help at the burial of their dead.

Only one family in the village, I learnt from the headman,
was being helped from public funds. This family consisted
of an old man and his daughter, who, owing to the attend-
ance her father required, could not go out to work. The
village provided a small house and three pints of rice daily.
The headman in his private capacity gave the girl, with the
assistance of some friends, straw rope-making to do and
paid a somewhat higher price than is usual.

Of last year's births in the village 10 per cent, had been
legally and 5 per cent, actually illegitimate. Four or five
births had occurred a few months after marriage.

We ate our lunch in the headman's room in the village
ofiice. Hanging from the ceiling was a sealed envelope to
be opened on receipt of a telegram. Some member of the
village staff always slept in that room. The envelope
contained instructions to be acted upon if mobilisation
took place.

When we had gone on some distance I stopped to watch
a farmer's wife and daughter threshing in a barn by pulling

242 UP-COUNTRY ORATORY

the rice through a row of steel teeth, the simple form of
threshing implement which is seen in slightly different
patterns all over Japan. (It is the successor of a contriv-
ance of bamboo stakes.) The women told me that one
person could thresh fourteen bushels a day. The imple-
ment cost 2 1 yen from travelling vendors but only 1^ yen
from the co-operative society. While we talked the farmer
appeared. I apologised to him for unwittingly stepping
on the threshold of the barn — that is, the grooved timber
in which the sliding doors run. It is considered to be an
insult to the head of the house to tread on the threshold as
in some way " standing on the householder's head."

This man had a bamboo plantation, and he told me, in
reply to a question, that the bamboo would shoot up at the
rate of more than a foot in twenty-four hours. (During
the month in which this is dictated I have measured the
growth of a shoot of a Dorothy Perkins climber and find
that it averages about quarter of an inch in twenty-four
hours.)

CHAPTER XXVIII

men, dogs and sweet potatoes
(shimane)

Nothing but omniscience could suffice to answer all the questions
implicitly raised. — J. G. Frazkb

When we descended from the hills we were in Shimane, a
long, narrow, coastwise prefecture through which one
travels over a succession of heights to the capital, Matsue,
situated at the far end. Two-thirds of the journey must
be made on foot and by kuruma.^ Some talk by the way
was about the farmers going five or six miles daily to the
hills to cut grass for their " cattle," the average number of
cattle per farmer being l-S hereabouts. It seemed strange
to see buckwheat at the flowering stage reached by the
crops seen in Fukushima several months before. The ex-
planation was that buckwheat is sown both in spring and
autumn.

In the old days notable samurai, fugitives from Tokyo,
had kept themselves secluded in the rooms we occupied at
Yamaguchi. In Shimane we had small plain low-ceiled
rooms in which daimyos had been accommodated. Not
here alone had I evidences of the simplicity of the life of
Old Japan.

I was wakened in the morning by the voice of a woman
earnestly praying. She stood in the yard of the house
opposite and faced first in one direction and then in
another. A friend of mine once stayed overnight at an inn
on the river at Kyoto. In the morning he saw several men
and a considerable number of women praying by the water-
side. They were the keepers and inmates of houses of
ill-fame. The old Shinto idea was that prayers might be

1 The railway has now been extended in the direction of Yamaguchi.

243

244 MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES

made anywhere at other times than festivals, for the god was
at the shrine at festivals only. Nowadays some old men
go to the shrine every morning, just as many old women
are seen at the Buddhist temples daily. Half the visitors
to a Shinto shrine, an educated man assured me, may pray,
but in the case of the other half the " worship " is " no more
than a motion of respect." My friend told me that when
he prayed at a shrine his prayer was for his children's or his
parents' health.

At a county town I found a library of 4,000 volumes,
largely an inheritance from the feudal regime. Wherever
I went I could not but note the cluster of readers at the
open fronts of bookshops.'

On our second day's journey in Shimane I had a kuruma
with wooden wheels, and in the hills the day after we passed
a man kneeling in a kago, the old-fashioned litter. When we
took to a basha we discovered that, owing to the roughness
of the road, we had a driver for each of our two horses.
We had also an agile lad who hung on first to one part and
then another of the vehicle and seemed to be essential in
some way to its successful management. The head of the
hatless chief driver was shaved absolutely smooth.

It was a rare thing for a foreigner to pass this way. My
companion frequently told me that he had difficulty in
understanding what people said.

We saw an extinct volcano called " Green Field Moun-
tain." There was not a tree on it and it was said never
to have possessed any. The whole surface was closely
cut, the patches cut at different periods showing up in
rectangular strips of varying shades. Wherever the hills
were treeless and too steep for cultivation they were care-
fully cut for fodder. In cultivable places houses were
standing on the minimum of ground. More than once we
had a view of a characteristic piece of scenery, a dashing
stream seen through a clump of bamboo.

When our basha stopped for the feeding of the horses,
they had a tub of mixture composed of boiled naked barley,
rice chaff, chopped straw and chopped green stuff. I
noticed near the inn a doll in a tree. It had been put there

1 See Appendix LI.

THE ELEVEN SIGNS 245

by children who beUeve that they can secure by so doing
a fine day for an outing. When we started again we met
with a company of strolling players : a man, his wife and
two girls, all with clever faces. We also saw several
peasant anglers fishing or going home with their catch.
A licence available from July to December cost 50 sen.

At a shop I made a note of its signs, the usual strips of
white wood about 8 ins. by 3, nailed up perpendicularly,
with the inscriptions written in black. One sign was the
announcement of the name and address of the householder,
which must be shown on every Japanese house. A second
stated that the place was licensed as a shop, a third that the
householder's wife was licensed to keep an inn, a fourth
that the householder was a cocoon merchant, a fifth that he
was a member of the co-operative credit society, a sixth
that he belonged to the Red Cross Society, a seventh that
his wife was a member of the Patriotic Women's Society,'
the eighth, ninth and tenth that the shopkeeper was an
adherent of a certain Shinto shrine, a member of a Shinto
organisation and had visited three shrines and made
donations to them. An eleventh board proclaimed that he
was of the Zen sect of Buddhism. Finally, there was a box
in which was stored the charms from various shrines.

We passed a company of villagers working on the road
for the local authority. The labourers were chiefly old
people and they were taking their task very easily.
Farther along the road men and women were working
singly. It seemed that the labourers belonged to families
which, instead of paying rates, did a bit of roadmending.
The work was done when they had time to spare.

For some time we had been in a part of the country in
which the ridges of the houses were of tiles. At an earlier
stage of our journey they had been either of straw or of
earth with flowers or shrubs growing in it. The shiny, red-
brown tiles give place elsewhere to a slate-coloured variety.

' Protests have been made against the way in which the country people
are dunned for subscriptions to these semi-official organisations. A high
agricultural authority has stated that in Nagano the farmers' taxes and
subscriptions to the Bed Cross and Patriotic Women Societies are
from 65 to 70 per cent, of their expenditure as against 30 to 35 per cent,
spent on outlay other than food and clothing.

246 MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES

The surface of all of these tiles is so smooth that they are
unlikely to change their hard tint for years. Meanwhile
they give the villages a look of newness. Their use is
spreading rapidly. Shiny though the tiles may be, one
cannot but admire the neat way in which they interlock.
One day when I wondered about the cost involved in
recovering roofs with these tiles, a woman worker who over-
heard me promptly said that, reckoning tiles and labour,
the cost was 60 or 70 sen per 22 tiles. In the old days
tiled porticoes were forbidden to the commonalty. They
were allowed only to daimyos who also used exclusively
the arm rests which every visitor to an inn may now
command. Besides arm rests I have frequently had
kneeling cushions of the white brocade formerly used only
for the zabuton of Buddhist priests.

In the county through which we were passing the fine
water grass, called i, used for mat making, is grown on
an area of about 78 ch5. It is sown in seed beds like rice
and is transplanted into inferior paddies in September.
(The grass is better grown in Hiroshima and Okayama.)

I saw a beautiful tree in red blossom. The name given
to it is " monkey slip," because of the smoothness of its
skin, which recalled the name of that very different
ornament of suburban gardens, " monkey puzzle."

During this journey we recovered something of the
conditions of old-time travel. There were chats by the
way and conferences at the inn in the evening and in
the morning concerning distances, the kind of vehicles
available, the character of their drivers, the charges, the
condition of the road, the probable weather and the places
at which satisfactory accommodation might be had.
What was different from the old days was that at every
stopping-place but one we had electric light. Part of our
journey was done in a small motor bus lighted by
electricity. Like the automobile we had hired a day or two
before, it was driven — by two young men in blue cotton
tights — at too high a speed considering the narrowness and
curliness of the roads by which we crossed the passes.
The roads are kept in reasonably good condition, but they
were made for hand cart and kuruma traffic.

MARVELLOUS MEDICINE VENDING 247

We passed an island on which I was told there were a
dozen houses. When a death occurs a beacon fire is made
and a priest on the mainland conducts a funeral ceremony.
By the custom of the island it is forbidden to increase the
number of the houses, so presumably several families live
together. In the mountain communities of the mainland,
where the number of houses is also restricted, it is usual
for only the eldest brother to be allowed to marry. The
children of younger brothers are brought up in the families
of their mothers.

We passed at one of the fishing hamlets the wreck of a
Russian cruiser which came ashore after the battle of
Tsushima. Two boat derricks from the cruiser served
as gate posts at the entrance of the school playground.

A familiar sight on a country road is the itinerant
medicine vendor. He or his employer believes in pushing
business by means of an impressive outfit. One typical
cure-all seller, who had his medicines in a shiny bag slung
over his shoulders, wore yellow shoes, cotton drawers, a
frock coat, a peaked cap with three gold stripes, and a
mysterious badge. On his hands he had white cotton
gloves and as he walked he played a concertina. A
common practice is to leave with housewives a bag of
medicines without charge. Next year another call is
made, when the pills and what not which have been used
are paid for and a new bag is exchanged for the old one.

The use of dogs to help to draw kuruma is forbidden in
some prefectures, but in three stages of our journey in
Shimane we had the aid of robust dogs. During this
period, however, I saw, attached to kuruma we passed,
three dogs which did not seem up to their work. Dogs
suffer when used for draught purposes because their chests
are not adapted for pulling and because the pads of their
feet get tender. The animals we had were treated well.
Each kuruma had a cord, with a hook at the end, attached
to it ; and this hook was slipped into a ring on the dog's
harness. The dogs were released when we went downhill
and usually on the level. Several times during each run,
when we came to a stream or a pond or even a ditch, the
dogs were released for a bathe. They invariably leapt into
18

248 MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES

the water, drank moderately, and then, if the water was too
shallow for swimming, sat down in it and then lay down.
Sometimes a dog temporarily at liberty would find on his
own account a small water hole, and it was comical to see
him taking a sitz bath in it. When the sun was hot a dog
would sometimes be retained on his cord when not pulhng
in order that he might trot along in the shade below the
kuruma. The dog of the kuruma following mine usually
managed when pulling to take advantage of the shade
thrown by my vehicle. A kurumaya told me that he had
given 8 yen for his dog. Dogs were sometimes sold for
from 10 to 15 yen. The difficulty was to get a dog that
had good feet and would pull. The dogs I saw were all
mongrels with sometimes a retriever, bloodhound or Great
Dane strain.

I made enquiries about another county town library.
There were 18,000 volumes of which 300 consisted of Europ-
ean books and 600 of bound magazines. The annual ex-
penditure on books, and I presume magazines, was 600 yen.

We passed a " special tribe " hamlet. Here the Eta
were devoting themselves to tanning and bamboo work.
I was told of other " peculiar people " called Hachia,
also of a hawker-beggar class which sells small things of
brass or bamboo or travels with performing monkeys.

Water from hot springs is piped long distances in water
pipes made of bamboo trunks, the ends of which are pushed
into one another. A turn is secured by running two pipes
at the angle required iiito a block of wood which has been
bored to fit.

When we got down to the sand dunes there were wind-
breaks, 10 or 15 ft. high, made of closely planted pines cut
flat at the top. Elsewhere I saw such windbreaks 30 ft.
high. On the telegraph wires there were big spiders'
webs about 4 ft. in diameter.

As we sped through a village my attention was attracted
by a funeral feast. The pushed-back shoji showed about
a dozen men sitting in a circle eating and drinking.
Women were waiting on them. At the back of the room,
making part of the circle, was the square coffin covered
by a white canopy.

POTATO MONUMENTS 249

While passing a Buddhist temple I heard the sound of
preaching. It might have been a voice from a church or
chapel at home.

Shortly afterwards I came on a memorial to the man who
introduced the sweet potato into the locality 150 years
before. This was the first of many sweet-potato memorials
which I encountered in the prefecture and elsewhere.
Sometimes there were offerings before the monuments;
Occasionally the memorial took the form of a stone cut
in the shape of a potato. There is a great exportation of
sweet potatoes — sliced and dried until they are brittle —
to the north of Japan where the tuber cannot be cultivated.'

While we rested at the house of a friend of my companion
we spoke of ennigration. There are four or five emigration
companies, and it is an interesting question just how much
emigration is due to the initiative of the emigrants them-
selves and how much to the activity of the companies.
The chief reason which induces emigrants to go to South
America is that, under the contract system, they get twice
as much money as they would obtain, say, in Formosa."

Our host did not remember any foreigner visiting his
village since his boyhood, though it is on the main road.
It took nearly four days for a Tokyo newspaper to arrive.
This region is so little known that when a resident
mentioned it in Tokyo he was sometimes asked if it was in
Hokkaido.

I was interested to see how many villages had erected
monuments to young men who had won distinction away
from home as wrestlers.

I had often noticed bulls drawing carts and behaving as
sedately as donkeys, but it was new to see a bull tethered at
the roadside with children plajdng round it. Why are the
Japanese bulls so friendly ?

In the mountainous regions we passed through I saw
several paddies no bigger than a hearthrug. At one spot
a land crab scurried across the road. It was red in colour
and about 2| ins. long.

' Satsuma-imo is Bweet potato. Our potato is called jaga-imo or
bareisho. Imo Ib the general naiue.
' See Appendix LIL

250 MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES

At a village office the headman's gossip was that priests
had been forbidden by the prefecture to interfere in
elections. We looked through the expenses of the village
agricultural association. For a lecture series 5 yen a
month was being paid. Then there had been an expen-
diture by way of subsidising a children's campaign against
insects prejdng on rice. For ten of the little clusters of
eggs one may see on the backs of leaves 4 rin was paid,
while for 10 moths the reward was 2 rin. The association
spent a further 10 yen on helping young people to attend
lectures at a distance. The commune in which those things
had been done numbered 3,100 people. There had been
two police offences during the year, but both offenders were
strangers to the locality.

In a cutting which was being made for the new railway,
girl labourers were steering their trucks of soil down a half-
mile descent and singing as they made the exhilarating run.
The building of a railway through a closely cultivated and
closely populated country involves the destruction of a
large amount of fertile land and the rebuilding of many
houses. The area of agricultural land taken during the
preceding and present reigns, not only for railways and
railway stations but for roads, barracks, schools and other
public buildings, has been enormous. " The owner of land
removed from cultivation may seem to do well by turning
his property into cash," a man said to me. " He may also
profit to some extent while the railway is building by the
Jobs he is able to do for the contractor, with the assistance
of his family and his horse or bull ; but afterwards he has
often to seek another way of earning his living than
farming."

We neared railhead on a market day and many folk in
their best were walking along the roads. Of fourteen
umbrellas used as parasols to keep off the sun that I counted
one only was of the Japanese paper sort ; all the others were
black silk on steel ribs in " foreign style " except for a crude
embroidery on the silk.

When we got into the town it was as much as our
kurumaya could do to move through the dense crowd of
rustics in front of booths and shops. Once more I was

SALT TEARS 261

impressed by the imperturbability and natural courtesy of
the people. At the station quite a number of farmers and
their families had assembled, not to travel by the train
but to see it start.

During the short journey by train I noticed lagoons in
which fish were artificially fed. At an agricultural
experiment station in the place at which we alighted there
were two specimen windmills set up to show farmers who
were fortunate enough to have ammonia water on their land
the cheapest means of raising it for their paddies. The
tendency here as elsewhere was to apply too much of the
ammonia water. All rubbish on this extensive experiment
station was carefully burnt under cover in order to
demonstrate the importance not only of getting all the
potash possible but of preserving it when obtained.

Farmers who are without secondary industries are short
of cash except at the times when barley, rice and cocoons
are sold, and in certain places they seem to have taken
to saving money on salt. An old man told us with tears
in his eyes how he had protested to his neighbours against
the tendency to do without salt. An excuse for attempting
to save on salt, besides the economical one, was the size
of the salt cubes. Neighbours clubbed together to buy a
cube, and thus a family, when it had finished its share, had
to wait until the neighbours had disposed of theirs and
market day came round.'

I saw a monument erected to the memory of " a good
farmer " who had planted a wood and developed irrigation.

We made a stay at the spot where, on a forest-clad hill
overlooking the sea, there stands in utter simpHcity the
great shrine of Izumo. The customary collection of shops
and hotels clustering at the town end of the avenue of torii
cannot impair the impression which is made on the alien be-
holder by this shrine in the purest style of Shinto architec-
ture. In the month in which we arrived at Izumo the deities
are believed to gather there. Before the shrine the Japanese
visitor makes his obeisance and his offering at the precise
spot — four places are marked — to which his rank permits
him to advance. (This inscription may be read :

* TJje Salt Monopoly profits are estimated at 314,204 yen for 1920-21.

252 MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES

" Common people at the doorway.") The estimate which
an official gave me of the number of visitors last year,
40,000, bore no relation to the " quarter of a milUon "
of the guide book. But it had been a bad year for farmers.
Forty-seven geisha, who had reported the previous year
that they had received 35,000 yen — there is ho limit to
what is tabulated in Japan — now reported that they had
gained only half that sum in twelve months, " the price of
cocoons being so low that even well-to-do farmers could not
come." I noticed that there was a clock let into one of
the granite votive pillars of the avenue along which one
walks from the town to the shrine. As I glanced at the
clock it happened that the sound of children's voices
reached me from a primary school. I wondered what
time and modern education, which have brought such
changes in Japan, might make of it all.

CHAPTER XXIX

FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN
(SHIMANE, TOTTORI AND HYOGO)

Those who suffer learn, those who love know. — ^Mrs. Havblock
Ellis

At Matsue, with which the name of Lafcadio Hearn will
always be associated, I chanced to arrive on the anniver-
sary of his death. His local admirers were holding a
memorial meeting. As a foreigner I was honoured with a
request to attend. First, however, I had the chance of
visiting Hearn's house. Matsue was the first place at which
Hearn lived. He always remembered it and at last came
back there to marry. Except that a pond has been filled
up — no doubt to reduce the number of mosquitoes — the
garden of his house is little changed.

The most interesting feature of the meeting was old
pupils' grateful recollections of Hearn, the middle-school
teacher. The gathering was held in a room belonging to
the town library in the prefectural grounds, but neither
the Governor nor the mayor was present. A sympathetic
speech was made by a chance visitor to the town, the
secretary-general to the House of Peers. He recalled
the antagonism which the young men at Tokyo University,
himself among them, felt towards the odd figure of Hearn —
he had a terribly strained eye and wore a monocle — when
he became a professor, and how very soon he gained the
confidence and regard of the class.

I had often wondered that there was no Japanese
memorial to Hearn, and when I rose to speak I said so. I
added that it was rare to meet a Japanese who had any
understanding of how much Hearn had done in forming
the conception of Japan possessed by thousands of

253

254 FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

Europeans and Americans. The fault in so many books
about Japan, I went on, was not that their " facts " were
wrong. What was wrong was their authors' attitude of
mind. I had heard Japanese say that Hearn was " too
poetical " and that some of his inferences were " in-
accurate." That was as might be. What mattered was
that the mental attitude of Hearn was so largely right.
He did not approach Japan as a mere " fact " collector
or as a superior person. What he brought to the country
was the humble, studious, imaginative, sympathetic atti-
tude ; and it was only by men and women of his rare type
that peoples were interpreted one to the other.

In that free-and-easy way in which meetings are con-
ducted in Japan it was permissible for us to leave after
another speech had been made. The proceedings were
interrupted while the promoters of the gathering showed
us a collection of books and memorials of Hearn,
arranged under a large portrait, and accompanied us to the
door of the hall. I do not recall during the time I was in
Japan any other public gathering in honour of Hearn, and
I met several prominent men who had either never heard
his name or knew nothing of the far-reaching influence
of his books. But some months after this Matsue meeting
there was included among the Coronation honours a
posthumous distinction for Hearn — " fourth rank of the
junior grade." '

During this journey I attended a dinner of officials and
leading agriculturists and had the odd sensation of making
a short after-dinner speech on my knees. At such a dinner
the guests kneel on cushions ranged round the four walls
of the room, and each man has a low lacquer table to
himself, and a geisha to wait on him. When the geisha
is not bringing in new dishes or replenishing the saki bottle,
she kneels before the table and chatters entertainingly.

1 This is, I am ofSoially informed, the highest rank ever bestowed on
a foreigner; but then Hearn was naturalised. In 1921 an appreciation of
" Koizumi Yakumo " was included by the Department of Education in a
middle-school textbook. Curiously enough, the fact that Hesirn married
a Japanese is overlooked. Owing to the fact that Hearn bought land
in Tokyo which has appreciated in value his family is in comfortable
oircumstances.

THE GEISHA'S LIFE 255

The governors of the feast visit the guests of honour and
drink with them. In the same way a guest drinks with his
neighbour and with his attendant geisha. I have a vivid
memory of a grave and elderly dignitary who at the merry
stage of such a function capered the whole length of the
room with his kneeling- cushion balanced on the top of his
head. There is a growing temperance movement in
Japan but a teetotaller is still something of an oddity.
My abstinence from saki was frequently supposed to be
the result of a vow.

Although the average geisha may be inane in her patter
and have little more than conventional grace and charm,
I have been waited on by girls who added real mental
celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to that elusive
and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable
position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in
both the comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of
unmistakable genius. Frequently a plain, elderly geisha
will display unsuspected mimetic ability. Alas, behind the
merry laugh and sprightliness of the girls who adorn a
feast lurks a skeleton. One is haunted by thoughts of the
future of a large proportion of these butterflies. No
doubt most foreigners generalise too freely in identifying
the professions of geisha and joro. In the present organisa-
tion of society some geisha play a legitimate r61e. They
gain in the career for which they have laboriously trained
an outlet for the expression of artistic and social gifts which
would have been denied them in domestic life. At the same
time the degrading character of the life led by many geisha
cannot be doubted. Apart from every other consideration
the temptation to drink is great. The opening of new
avenues to feminine ability, the enlarged opportunities
of education and self-respect and the increasing opening
for women on the stage — from which women have been
excluded hithertd — must have their effect in turning the
minds of girls of wit and originality to other means of
earning a living than the morally and physically hazardous
profession of the geisha.

When we left Matsue by steamer on our way to Tottori
prefecture I saw middle-school eights at practice. An

256 FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

agriculturist told me of the custom of giving holidays to
oxen and horses. The villagers carefully brush their
animals, decorate them and lead them to pastures where,
tethered to rings attached to a long rope, " they may graze
together pleasantly." One of the islands we visited bore
the name of the giant radish, Daikon, which is itself a
corruption of the word for octopus. The island devoted
itself mainly to the growing of peonies and ginseng. The
ginseng is largely exported to China and Korea, but there
is a certain consumption in Japan. Ginseng is sometimes
chewed, but is generally soaked, the liquid being drunk.
Ginseng is popularly supposed to be an invigorant, and
Japanese doctors in Korea have lately declared that it has
some value. The root is costly, hence the proverb about
eating ginseng and hanging oneself, i.e. getting into debt.

In walking across the island I passed a forlorn little
shrine. It was merely a rough shed with a wide shelf at
the back, on which stood a row of worn and dusty figures,
decked with the clothes of children whose recovery was
supposed to have been due to their influence. It was
raining and the shelter was full of children playing in the
company of an old crone with a baby on her back. Further
on in the village I came across a new public bath. The
price of admission was one sen, children half price.

A small port was pointed out to me as being open to
foreign trade. Everybody is not aware that in Japan there
is a restriction upon foreign shipping except at sixty
specified places.' The reason given for the restriction is
the unprofitableness of custom houses at small places. One
day, perhaps, the world will wake up to the inconvenience
and financial burden imposed by the custom-house
system of raising revenue.

We stayed the night at a little place at the eastern ex-
tremity of the Shimane promontory where there is a shrine
and no cultivation of any sort is allowed " for fear of de-
filement." Waste products are taken away by boat. I
marked a contrast between theoretical and practical
holiness. Our inn overlooked a special landing-place

1 Coastwise traffic is also forbidden to foreign vessels, as is traffic
between France and Algeria to other than French vessels,

"DOUBLE LICENSE" GIRLS 257

where, because a " sacred boat " from the shrine is launched
there, a notice had been put up forbidding the throwing of
rubbish into the sea. A few minutes after the board had
been pointed out to me I saw an old man cast a considerable
mass of rubbish into the water not six feet away from it.
When we visited the shrine three pilgrims were at their
devotions. The next morning when our steamer left and
the chief priest of the shrine was bidding us adieu my at-
tention was attracted by loud conversation in the second
storey of an inn, the shoji of which were open. Our pil-
grims, two of whom were bald, had spent the night at an inn
of bad character and were now in the company of prosti-
tutes in the sight of all men. One pilgrim had a girl on his
knee, another was himself on a girl's knee and a third had
his arm round a girl's neck. In this " sacred " place of
2,000 inhabitants there were forty " double license " girls,
five being natives. A few years ago all the girls were
natives. A " double license " girl means one who is
licensed both as a geisha and a prostitute. The plan of
issuing " double licenses " is adopted at Kyoto and else-
where. As to the pilgrims to whom I have referred, some-
one quoted to me the saying, " It is only half a pilgrimage
going to the shrine without seeing the girls."

Returning to the custom of launching a sacred boat it
is not without significance that many Japanese deities have
some connection with the sea. Even in the case of the
deities of shrines a long way from the sea the ceremony of
" going down to the sea " is sometimes observed. Sand
and sea water are sent for in order to be mixed with the
water used to cleanse the car in which the figure of the
deity is drawn through the streets.

The social and financial position of tenants was illus-
trated by an incident at an inn. As the maid came from
the country I asked her if her father were a tenant or an
owner. My companion interrupted to tell me that the
question was not judiciously framed because the girl would
" think it a disgrace to own that her father was a tenant."
The name of a tenant used long ago to be " water drinker."
This waiting-maid was a good-looking and rather clever
girl. I was dismayed when my friend told me that she had

258 FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

said to him quite simply that she had thoughts of becoming
a joro. She thought it would be a " more interesting life."

When we reached Tottori prefecture we found ourselves
in a country which grows more cotton than any other.
Japanese cotton (grown on about 400 cho) is unsuitable for
manufacture into thread, but because of its elasticity is
considered to be valuable for the padding of winter clothing
and for futon and zabuton. Their softness is maintained
by daily sunning.

At a county office I noted that the persons who were
receiving relief were classified as follows : Illness, 26 ;
cripples, 17 ; old age, 16 ; schoolboys, 12 ; infancy, 1.

In the course of our journey a Shinto priest was pointed
out to me as observing the priestly taboo by refusing tea
and cake. I noticed, however, that he smoked. I was
told that when he was in Tokyo he purified himself in the
sea even in midwinter. I did not like his appearance. Nor
for the matter of that was I impressed by the countenances
of some Buddhist priests I encountered in the train from
time to time. " Thinking always of money," someone said.
But every now and again I saw fine priestly faces.

I have noted down very little in regard to the crops and
the countryside in Tottori. Things seemed very much the
same as I had seen in Shimane. At an agricultural show in
the city of Tottori the varieties of yam and taro were so
numerous as to deceive the average Westerner into behev-
ing that he was seeing the roots of different kinds of plants.
A feature of the show was a large realistic model of a rice
field with two life-size figures.

In the evening I talked with two distinguished men
until a late hour. " We are not a metaphysical people,"
one of them said. " Nor were our forefathers as religious
as some students may suppose. Those who went before us
gave to the Buddhist shrine and even worshipped there,
but their daily life and their religion had no close connec-
tion. We did not define religion closely. ReUgion has
phases according to the degree of public instruction. Our
religioh has had more to do with propitiation and good for-
tune than with moraUty. If you had come here a century
ago you would have been unable to find even then religion

"MAKE THE YOUNG FELLOWS WORK" 259

after another pattern. If it be said that a man must be
religious in order to be good the person who says so does
not look about him. I am not afraid to say that our people
are good as a result of long training in good behaviour.
Their good character is due to the same causes as the free-
dom from rowdiness which may be marked in our crowds."

" What is wanted in the villages," said the other person-
age, " is one good personality in each." I said that the
young men's association seemed to me to be often a dull
thing, chiefly indeed a mechanism by means of which
serious persons in a village got the young men to work
overtime. " Yes," was the response, " the old men make
the young fellows work."

The first speaker said that there had been three watch-
words for the rural districts. " There was Industrialisa-
tion and Increase of Production. There was Public Spirit
and Public Welfare. There was The Shinto Shrine the
Centre of the Village. We have a certain conception of a
model village, but perhaps some hypocrisy may mingle
with it. They say that the village with well-kept Buddhist
and Shinto shrines is generally a good village."

" In other words," I ventured, " the village where there
is some non-material feeling."

The rejoinder was : " Western religion is too high, and,
I fear, inapplicable to our life. It may be that we are too
easily contented. But there are nearly 60 millions of us.
I do not know that we feel a need or have a vacant place
for religion. There is certainly not much hope for an in-
crease of the influence of Buddhism."

As we went along in the train I was told that on a sixth
of the rice area in Tottori there had been a loss of 70 per
cent, by wind. When a man's harvest loss exceeds this
percentage he is not liable for rates and taxes. A passenger
told me about " nursery pasture." This is a patch of grass
in the hills to which a farmer sends his ox to be pastured in
common with the oxen of other farmers under the care of a
single herdsman. It is from cattle keeping on this modest
scale that the present beef requirements of the country are
largely met.'

1 See Appendix LIIL,

260 FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

Although the opinions expressed to me by Governors of
prefectures have been frequently recorded in these pages, I
have not felt at liberty to identify more than one of the
Excellencies who were good enough to express their views to
me. A friend who knew many Governors offered me the
following criticism, which I thought just : " They are too
practical and too much absorbed in administration to be
able to think. Often they read very little after leaving
the university. They have seldom anything to tell you
about other than ordinary things, and they seldom show
their hearts. You cannot learn much from Governors who
have nothing original to say or are fearful or live in their
frock coats or do not mean to show half their minds or are
practising the old official trick of talking round and round
and always evading the point. One fault of Governors is
that they are being continually transferred from prefecture
to prefecture. You have no doubt yourself noticed how
often Governors were new to their prefectures. But with
all the faults that our Governors have, there are not a few
able, good and kind men among them and they are not
recruited from Parliament but must be members of the Civil
Service. One of the most common words in our political
life is genshitsu, ' responsibility for one's own words.' If
Governors fear to assume the responsibility of their own
views they are only of a part with a great deal of the
official world."

We turned away from the northern sea coast and struck
south in order to cross Japan to the Inland Sea en route for
Kobe and Tokyo.

As we came through Hyogo prefecture my companion
pointed to hill after hill which had been afforested since his
youth. One of the things which interested me was the
number and the tameness of the kites which were catching
frogs in the paddies.

Before I left Hyogo I had the advantage of a chat with
one who for many years past had thought about the rural
situation in Japan generally. He spoke of " the late
Professor King's idealising of the Japanese farmer's con-
dition." He went on : " While King laid stress on the
ability to be self-supporting on a small area he ignored

A "PARASITIC CLASS" 261

the extent to which many rural people are underfed. The
change in the Meiji era has been a gradual transference
from ownership to tenancy. Many so-called representa-
tive farmers have been able to add field to field until they
have secured a substantial property and have ceased to be
farmers. An extension of tenancy is to be deplored, not
only because it takes away from the farmer a feeling of
independence and of incentive, but because it creates a
parasitic class which in Japan is perhaps even more parasitic
than in the West. A landowner in the West almost
invariably realises that he has certain duties. In Japan
a landowner's duties to his neighbourhood and to the
State are often imperfectly understood.

" On the other hand the position of the farmer has been
very much improved socially. A great deal of pity bestowed
by the casual foreign visitor is wasted. The farmer is
accustomed to extremes of heat and cold and to a bare
living and poor shelter. And after all there is a great deal
of happiness in the villages. It is hardly possible to take a
day's kuruma ride without coming on a festival somewhere,
and drunkenness has undoubtedly diminished."

I spoke with an old resident about the agricultural
advance in the prefecture. " In fifteen years," he said,
" our agricultural production has doubled. As to the
non-material condition of the people, generally speaking the
villagers are very shallow in their religion. Not so long
ago officials used to laugh at religion, but I don't know that
some of them are not now changing their point of view.
Some of us have thought that, just as we made a Japanese
Buddhism, we might make a Japanese Christianity which
would not conflict with our ideas."

TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE
CHAPTER XXX

THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

(NAGANO)
The condition of the lower orders is the true mark. — Johnson

The Buddhist temple in which I lived for about two
months stands on high ground in a village lying abdut
2,500 ft. above sea-level in the prefecture of Nagano and
does not seem to have been visited by foreigners. It is
reached by a road which is little better than a track. No
kuruma are to be found in the district, but there are a
few light two- wheeled lorries. Practically all the traffic is
on horseback or on foot. There is a view of the Japanese
Alps and of Fuji.

Running through the village ' is a river. Most of the
summer it may be crossed by stepping stones, but the width
of the rocky bed gives some notion of the volume of water
which pours down after rains and on the melting of the
snow. Two or three miles up from the village a consider-
able amount of water is drawn off into two channels which
have been dug, one on either side of the river, at a gentler
slope than that at which the stream flows. The rapid fall of
the river is indicated by the fact that these channels reach
the village more than 100 ft. above the level at which the
river itself enters it. The channels, cut as they have been
through sharply sloping banks packed with boulders and

' The village consists of about 270 houses. It is joined administratively
to another village, about two miles off, in order to form a mura (commune).
The village I am about to describe is an oaza (large hamlet), which is made
up in its turn of two aza (small hamlets). These aza are themselves divided
into six kumi (companies), which are again sub-divided, in i<he case of the
largest, into four.

262

COMMUNAL LABOUR 263

big stones, and strengthened throughout by banking, in
order to cope as far as possible with the torrents which
rage down the hillside in winter, represent a vast amount
of communal labour. By the side of each channel the
excavated earth and stones have been used to make a path
for pack horses. The water which comes down these
channels serves not only for the ordinary uses of the village
but for irrigating the rice fields and for driving the many

The Buddhist Temple (with Shinto Shrine on the Left) in which
THIS Chapter was written

water wheels, the plashing and groaning of which are heard
night and day.

The whole area of the oaza is officially recorded as 800
cho, but the real area may be double, or even more than
that. About 40 per cent, is cultivated either as paddy or
as dry land. The remaining 60 per cent., from which
18 cho may be deducted for house land, is under grass and
wood. Half of this grass and woodland belongs to the
oaza and half to private persons. The grass is mostly
couch grass and weeds. In places there is a certain amount
of clover and vetch. Of the 200 families, numbering about
1,700 people, less than a dozen are tenants. Of the others,
19

264 LIFE OF PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

a third cultivate their own land and hire some more. The
remaining two-thirds cultivate their own land and hire
none. The outstanding crop beyond rice is mulberry. A
considerable amount of millet and buckwheat is also grown.

The village is obviously well off. The signs are : suc-
cessful sericulture, the large quantity of rice eaten, the
number of well-looking horses (the millet seems to be grown
largely for them, but they also receive beans and wheat
boiled), the fact that no attempt is made to collect the
considerable amount of horse manure on the roads, the
cared-for appearance of the temple and shrines, the almost
complete absence of tea-houses, the ease with which new
land may be obtained and the contented look of the people.

One does not expect to find in a remote and wholly
Buddhist village many other animals than horses, and in
this community the additional live stock consists of ten
goats (kept for giving milk for invalids), two pigs and a
number of poultry. A working horse over four years was
worth 150 yen. The value of land ^ is to be considered in
relation to local standards of value. It is doubtful if the
priest, who seemed to be comfortably off, is in receipt of
more than 250 yen a year. The midwife, who belongs to
the oldest family and has been trained in Tokyo, gets from
2 to 2f yen per case. As new land is always available on
the hillsides there is very little emigration to the towns,
but twenty girls are working in the factories in the big
silk-reeUng centre twelve miles off. The hillside land which
is owned by the village is not sold but rented to those
who want it. To make new paddies is primarily a question
of having enough capital with which to buy the artificial
manure required for the crops.

I was given to understand that no one in the village
was poor enough to need public help, but that the school
fees of twelve children were paid by the community. This
is a system peculiar to Nagano, which is a progressive
prefecture vying with other prefectures to increase the
percentage of school attendance. One of the signs of
the well-off character of the village which appears
when one is able to investigate a little is that the

' See Appendix LIV.

THE FIRE ENGINES

265

place is a favourite haunt of beggars, who, I am told —
every calling is organised — have made it over to the less
fortunate members of their fraternity. The village has
enough money to spend to make it worth while for trades-
men from a distance to open temporary shops every Bon
season and at the New Year festival. A man in an average
position may lay out 200 yen on his daughter's wedding.
A farmer who knew his fellow-villagers' position pretty
closely said he thought that the position of tenant farmers
was " rather well." In the whole village there might be
seventy or eighty householders who had some debt, but it
was justifiable. In an ordinary year about 150 farmers
wpuld have
something to lay
by after their
twelve months'
work. Perhaps
fifty farmers, if
the; price of rice
or of cocoons
were low, might
be unable to
save ; but ordi-
narily they
would have
something in

their pockets. About half the farmers are engaged in
sericulture — I noticed cocoons offered at the shrine. The
other half sell their mulberry leaf crop to their neighbours.
The village, which is perhaps 400 years old, is increasing
in population by about forty every year. The family which
is said to have founded the village is still largely represented
in it.

The village has as many as six fire engines, which can
be moved about either on wheels or on runners according
to the weather, and as many look-out ladders and fire-
alarm bells. The young men's association has no
fewer than half a dozen buildings, the property of the
village. Five of them are little more than sheds and
seem to be used on wet days as nurseries and playrooms

Fire Engine aotj Pbimitive Figures

266 LIFE OF PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

Young Men's Clttb-boom

for children. The sixth is the village theatre, playing
at which appears to have been abandoned for some
years. Travelling players give their shows where .they
will. The theatre stands in a space encircled by large
trees opposite the chief shrine of the village. There is

also here a
smaller shrine
(fox god) and
some tomb-
stones.

Before the
chief shrine are
two large
leaden lan-
terns. At the
base of these a considerable strip of metal has been torn
away. This unusual destruction by village lads caused
me to make enquiry. I found that the boys had
merely enlarged a hole made by adults. The destruction
had been wrought in order to remove the inscription on
the lanterns. It was said that the local donor had meanly
omitted to
make the cus-
tomary gift to
the shrine to
cover the small
expense of
lighting the
lanterns on the
occasion of
festivals. It
was the feeling
of the villagers,
therefore, that

he should not be allowed to blazon his name in connection
with a shabby gift.

There is a ceremony about half a dozen times a year at
the chief shrine, which is about a century old. The Shinto
priest, who seemed to be a genuine antiquary, was of
opinion that the structure inside the shrine might have been

Memorial Stones

THE HORSE GOD

267

built two hundred years ago. In addition to this chief
shrine and the small shrine near it, there are two other
shrines in the village, one in the temple yard (god of happi-
ness) and the other (horse god) in an open space of its own.

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the non-
material life of this village is the fact that it contains no
fewer than 400 carved stones of a more or less religious
character. A few are Buddhist ; some are memorials to
priests or teachers ; several bear that representation of a
man and a woman facing one another (p. 265) which is one of
the oldest mystic emblems ; the majority are devoted ap-
parently to the horse god. Every man who loses a horse
erects a stone. There are two persons in the village who
can carve these stones at a cost of about 2 yen. Some stones
which are
painted red are
dedicated to
the fire god.
The 400 stones
of which I am
speaking do
not include
grave stones.
These are seen
everywhere,
many of them

just by the wayside. Nearly every family buries in its own
ground. Some burial places with stones of many forms
dating back for a long period of years are extremely im-
pressive. At the Bon season the grass on every burying
ground is carefully cut.

All the shop-keepers seem to own their own houses and
all but three have some land. There are three saki shops,
two of which sell other things than sakS, two general shops,
two cake and sweet shops, two tobacco shops, a lantern
shop and a barber. There are eight carpenters, four stone-
cutters, jBve plasterers and wall builders, five woodcutters,
two roof makers, two horse shoers, and in the winter a
blacksmith. (The cost of putting on four shoes is 60 sen.)
All these artisans own their own houses and all have land.

Roof protected against Storms by Stones

268 LIFE OF PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

As to the health of the village there are two doctors who
come every other day. One was qualified at Chiba and the
other at Sendai. They make no charge for advice and the
price of medicine is only 10 sen unless the materials are
expensive. I suppose they may receive presents. They
also probably have a piece of land. There is no veterinary
surgeon, but one is to be found in the village which com-
poses the other half of the commune.

A physician who had been born in the village and was
staying for a few days with the Buddhist priest who was
my host, thought that 90 per cent, of the villagers ate no
meat whatever and that only 50 or 60 per cent, ate fish, and
then only ceremonially, that is at particular times in the
year when it is the custom in Japan to eat fish. The
villagers who did eat meat or fish did not take it oftener
than twice or thrice a month. The canned meat and
canned fish in the shops — Japanese brands — were used
almost entirely for guests. The doctor expressed the
opinion of most Japanese that " people who do not eat
meat are better tempered and can endure more." I have
heard Japanese say that " foreigners are short-tempered
because they eat so much meat."

We spoke of the considerable consumption of pickles,
highly salted or fermented. For example, in the ordinary
25-sen bento (lunch) box there are three or four different
kinds of pickles. The doctor said that pickles were not
only a means of taking salt and so appetisers to help the
rice down, but digestives ; fermented pickles supplied
diastase which enabled the stomach to deal promptly with
the large quantities of rice swallowed.

I asked for the doctor's opinion as to the prevalence of
tumours, displacements and cancer among women who
labour in the fields and have to bring up children and do
all the housework of a peasant's dwelling. The doctor
replied that he was disposed to think that cases of the
ailments I spoke of were not numerous. Cancer was cer-
tainly rare. He knew that in Japan rickets, goitre and gout
were all less common than in the West. He expressed the
opinion that childbirth was easier than in the West. It
was a delight to see the fine carriage of the women and girls

THE WORLD WITHOUT RICE

269

astride on the high saddles of the horses.^ Both sexes in
the district wear over their kimonos blue cotton trousers,
something like a plumber's overall only tighter in the legs.
The women are certainly strong. One day I saw a woman
carrjang uphill on her back two wooden doors about 6 ft.
by 5 ft. 6 ins. An old woman I met on the road volunteered
her view that women were " stronger " than men. She
was very much concerned to know how foreigners could live
without eating rice. She said
— and this is characteristic-
ally Japanese — that she
envied me being able to travel
all over the world.

The Buddhist temple is
built wholly of wood and
the roof is thatched. When-
ever there was an earth-
quake the timbers seemed to
crackle rather than creak.
The temple is relatively new
and seems to have been built
with materials given by the
villagers and by means of a
gift of 1 ,000 yen. The work-
manship was local and a good
deal of it was faulty. This
may have been due to lack of
experience, but it is more
likely that the cause was
limited funds. The plan and
proportions of the building

are excellent and the carving is first-rate. The right of
" presentation to the living " is in the hands of the village.
The priest and his family hve in a large house on one side
of the temple. On the other side is a small Shinto shrine
to which the priest seems to give such attention as is neces-
sary. The temple is Shingon. There is a sermon once a

1 The horses wear basket-work muzzles to prevent them nibbling the
crops. By way of compensation for these encumbrances they have head
tassels and belly cloths to keep ofl the flies.

Off to the Upland Fields

270 LIFE OF PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

year only, or " when some famous man comes." / The
actual temple in which the priest, who showed me k fine
collection of robes, conducts his services is betweei/ forty
and fifty mats in area. Behind it is the room in wl^ch the
ihai or tablets of the dead are arranged. This hart of
the building is covered on the outside with plastef in the
manner of a kura (godown) so as to be fire-proof. On
either side of the actual temple are rooms very much as in
a spacious private house. There are two of eighteen and
fifteen mats, two of twelve and ten mats and two small
ones. There is also a wide covered engawa (verandah) in
front and at the sides. A small kitchen and what the
auctioneers call the usual offices complete the building.

Right round the temple there is a nice garden which
keeps the priest's man, a picturesque, sweet-tempered,
guileless old fellow, occupied much of his time. The priest
conducted a service twice a day, at 5.30 in the morning
and at 7.30 in the evening. When he fell ill and had to be
carried in a litter to the nearest town for an operation, we
missed his beautiful chanting and expert sounding of the
deep-toned gong of the sanctuary. The great bell in the
court-yard was struck by the priest's boy at sundown.
The priest kept the old rule against meat. He and his wife
would not eat even cake or biscuits because they feared
that there might be milk and butter in them. The couple
were very kind to us and we enjoyed a delightfully quiet
life in the lofty sunny temple rooms. I should judge that
OteraSan (Mr. Temple) was respected in the village. His
wife was a bustling woman of such sweetness and simplicity
of nature as can only be found in a far valley.

I have mentioned that the total incomings of the priest
are probably about 250 yen. He receives no salary but has
his house free. He must " discuss about an5i;hing wanted
in the temple." I do not suppose he had to ask anybody
whether he might lodge us or not. He receives considerable
gifts of rice, perhaps to the value of 120 yen, at any rate
enough for the whole year. He has also the rent of the
" glebe," which consists of 12 tan of paddy, 2 tan of dry
field and 10 tan of woodland. Then there are the gifts
which are made to him at funerals and for the services he

THE PRIESTS' PENCE 271

conducts at the villagers' houses on the days of the dead.
One day during the Bon season every household sent a little
girl or boy with a present to the priest. In return these
small, visitors were given sweets. During the Bon season
some very old men of the village came and worshipped at
the Shinto shrine and were entertained with sakS by the
priest on the engawa of his temple. The amount in the
collecting box in front of the little Shinto shrine in the
temple yard, largely in rin, would not be more than 10 or
15 sen in the year. Most of the contributions are in the
form of pinches of rice. The priest may give 10 yen a
year to his man who works about the temple and his house
and accompanies him to funerals and to the memorial
services at the villagers' dwellings ; but this servitor, like
his master, no doubt receives presents.

The Shinto priest is probably not so well off as the
Buddhist priest. The village makes a small payment to
him twice a year. At New Year 3 yen in all may be flung
in the collecting box at the shrine, but the priest has
presents made to him when he goes to see ailing folk and
when he officiates at the building of a new house. Most
people when they are ill seem to send for the Shinto priest.
But he explained to me that he does not expect a sick man
to " worship only." He is accustomed to say to the people,
" Doctor first, god second," from which I was to conclude,
one who heard told me, that the priest was " rather a civil-
ised man." The Shinto priest had succeeded a relative in
his position. The village had found its Buddhist priest
in a neighbouring district.

The Buddhist priest told me that every year 150 or 160
men and women made a pilgrimage to a famous shrine some
few miles off. The custom was for every house to be
represented in the pilgrimage. Half a dozen people in the
year might go on personal pilgrimages and fifty or so might
visit a little shrine on a neighbouring mountain.

CHAPTER XXXI

" BON " SEASON SCENES
(NAGANO)

As modems we have no direct afSnity ; as individuals we have a capacity
for personal sympathy. — Matthew Abnold

I HAD the good fortune to be in the village during the Bon
season. The idea is that the spirits which are visiting their
old homes remain between the 11th and 14th of August.
The 11th is called mukae bon and the 14th okuri bon.
{Mukae means going to meet ; okuri to see off.) On the
11th the villagers burned a piece of flax plant in front of
their houses. That night the priest said a special prayer in
the temple and used the cymbals in addition to the ordinary
gong and drum. The prayer seemed peculiarly sad.
Before the shrines in their houses the villagers placed offer-
ings. One was a horse made out of a cucumber, the legs
being bits of flax twig and the tail and mane the hair-like
substance from maize cobs. There were also offerings
of real and artiflcial flowers and of grapes. In one house
I visited I saw geta, waraji, kimonos, pumpkins, caramels
and pencils. Strings of buck-wheat macaroni were laid
over twigs of flax set in a vase. The ihai (name-plates of
the dead) seemed to be displayed more prominently than
usual. (They are kept in a kind of small oratory called
ihaido, and after a time several names are collected on a
single plate.) Mochi (rice- flour dumpling) is eaten at this
time. On the 12th and 14th the priest called at each
house for two or three minutes.

I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead
returned at the Bon season. The answer was, " Only the
old men and young children believe that the dead actually
come, but the young men and young women, when they see

272

GRIEF AND A SMILING FACE

273

the burning of the flax-plant and the other things that are
done, think of the dead ; they remember them solemnly at
this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a
Japanese house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf
but a Buddhist shrine — where the name plates of the dead
for several generations are treasured — cannot but feel that,
when all allowances are made for the dulling influences of
use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the minds of the
household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is
a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of
the Shinto shelf, just as there
is a certain freedom at the
public shrines and in the
temple, does not destroy the
impression. When a man has
taken me to his little grave-
yard I have been struck by
the lack of that lugubriousness
which Western people com-
monly associate with what is
sacred. The Japanese con-
ception of reverence is some-
what different from our own.
As to sorrow, the idea is, as is
well known, that it is the
height of bad manners to
trouble strangers with a dis-
play of what in many cases is
largely a selfish grief. A man-
servant smiled when he told

me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the
tears ran down his face.

When the Bon season ended on the fourteenth all the
flowers and decorations of the domestic shrines were taken
early in the morning to the bridge over the diminished
river and flung down. The idea is perhaps that they are
carried away to the sea. (As a matter of fact there was so
little water that almost everything flung in from the bridge
remained in sight for weeks until there was a storm.)
_When the flowers and -decorations had been cast from the

Fabmek's Wife

274 "BON" SEASON SCENES

bridge the people went off to worship at the graves. Many
coloured streamers of paper, written on by the priest, were
flying there.

The Bon dances took place five nights running in the
open space between the Shinto shrine and the old barn
theatre. Nothing could have been duller. The line from
Ruddigore came to mind, " This is one of our blameless
dances." The first night the performers were evidently
shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things
warmed up a little more each night and on the last night
of all there was a certain animation ; but even then the
movement, the song and the whole scheme of the dance
seemed to be lacking in vigour. What happened was that
a number of lads gradually formed themselves into a ring,
which got larger or smaller as the girls joined it or waited
outside. The girls bunched together all the time. None
of the dancers ever took hands. The so-called dancing con-
sisted of a raising of both arms — the girls had fans in their
hands — and a simple attitudinising. The lads all clapped
their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of
way ; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with
their fans. The boys were in clean working dress. Some
had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and
others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes
with fine obi and white aprons. The music was dirge-like.
It was not at all what Western people understand to be
singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of
falsetto, and these five or six notes were repeated over and
over and over again. The only word I can think of which
approximately describes what I heard, but it seems harsh,
is the Northern word, yowling. First the lads yowled and
then the girls responded with a slightly more musical
repetition of the same sounds. For all the notice the boys
appeared to take of the girls they might not have been
present. The lads and lasses were no doubt fully conscious,
however, of each other's presence. The dancing took place
on the nights of the full moon. But it was cloudy, and,
owing to the big surrounding trees, the performance was
often dimly lit.

To me the dancing was depressing, but that is not to say

DEVITALISED "BON"

275

that the dancers found it so. Dancing began at eight
o'clock and went on till midnight. " They would not be
fit for their work next day if they danced later," a sober-
minded adult explained. This was only one suggestion
among many that the dance has been devitalised under
the respectabilising influence of the policeman and village
elders who had forgotten their youth. To the onlooker it
did not seem to matter very
much whether the dance, as
it is now, continues or not.
Occasionally one had an im-
pression that it had once been
a folk dance of vigour and
significance. But the present-
day performance might have
been conceived and presented
by a P.S.A. All this is true
when the dance is contrasted
with an English West- country
dance or a dance in Scotland
at Hallowe'en. But it must
be remembered that the Bon
dance during the first nights is
in the nature of a lament for
the dead. There is something
haunting in the strange little
refrain, though it is difficult
to hum or whistle it. Perhaps
the whole festival is too inti-
mately racial to be fully under-
stood by a stranger. By the
end of the festival, on the night
of merrymaking in honour of the village guardian spirit,
things were livelier. Some of the lads had evidently had
saM and even the girls had lost their demureness.

After the Buddhist Bon season was over it was the turn
of Shinto, and the village children were paraded before the
shrine. A number of Shinto priests in the neighbourhood
took a leading part in making the customary offerings and
the local priest read a longish address to the guardian spirit

Mother and Child

276 "BON" SEASON SCENES

of the village. Respectful correctness rather than devout-
ness is the phrase which one would ordinarily be disposed
to apply to the ceremonies at a Shinto shrine, but the local
priest was reverential. The ceremonies of the day evi-
dently meant a great deal to him. The children paid a well-
drilled attention. They also sang the national anthem and
a special song for the day under the leadership of the
school teacher, who played on a portable harmonium which
sounded as portable harmoniums usually sound. The
whole proceedings wore a semi-official look.

Happily there was nothing semi-official about the
wrestling to which we were invited later in the day. A
special little platform had been put up for us. The ring
was made on rice chaff and earth. The wrestlers squatted
in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They did not
wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had
a wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his
legs. One of the best things about the wrestling was the
formal introduction of the competitors. A weazened little
man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and bare legs, but with
the address and dignity of a " No " player, proclaimed the
names and styles — it seems that the wrestlers have a fancy
to be known by the names of mountains and rivers — in a
fashion which recalled the tournament. There was also
another personage, with a Dan Leno-like face and an extra-
ordinary gift of contorting his legs, who played the buffoon,
and gyrated round the dignified M.C., who remained un-
moved while the audience laughed. It was evidently the
right thing for the prizes — they were awarded at the end of
each bout — to be presentedascomicallyas possible; andsome
of the Shakespearean humours which appealed so powerfully
to the groundlings at the Globe were enacted as if neither
space nor time intervened between us and the Elizabethans.
The bouts were not so fast as professional wrestlers are
accustomed to, but they were none the less exciting. The
result was invariably in some doubt and often entirely un-
expected. The usual rule was that he who threw his man
twice was the winner. In some events, immediately a
wrestler had been thrown, a succession of other contestants
rushed at the victor, one after the other, without allowing

THE VILLAGE WRESTLERS 277

him time even to straighten his back. Some of the
competitors were poorly developed but the lankiest and
skinniest were often excellent wrestlers. At an interval in
the wrestling the committee flung hard peaches to wrestlers
and spectators. I wanted to make some little acknowledg-
ment of the kindness of the young men's association in
providing us with our little platform, and it was suggested
that autographed fans at about a penny three-farthings
apiece for about forty wrestlers would be acceptable.
This gift was announced on a long streamer. The funny
man of the ring also made a speech of welcome. I may
add that the young men's association had fitted up on
the way to the scene of the wrestling a number of special
lanterns which bore efforts in English by a student home
for the holidays.

I was told that the people of the village were " honest,
independent and earnest," and I am disposed to think that
this may be true of most of them. As to honesty, we had
the satisfaction of living without any thought of dorobo
(robbers). It is a great comfort to be able at night to
leave open most of the shoji and not to have to pull out the
amado (wooden shutters) from their case. The nature of
our possessions was well laiown not only in the village but
throughout the district, for there was seldom a day on which
a knot of grown-ups or children did not come to peer into
our rooms. The inspection was accompanied by many
polite bows and friendly smiles. On a festival day the
crowd occasionally reached about fifty.

There were formerly several teahouses in the village, but
under the influence of the young men's association all houses
of entertainment but two had been closed. These two had
become " inns." In one of these the girl attendant was
the proprietor's daughter ; in the other there was a solitary
waitress. One of the abolished teahouses had taken itself
two miles away, where possibly it still had visitors. There
seemed to be two public baths in the village, both belonging
to private persons. The charge was 1 sen for adults and
6 rin for children. At one of the baths I noticed separate
doors for men and women ; in the bath itself the division
between the sexes was about two feet high.

278 "BON" SEASON SCENES

The smallest subdivision of the village is called kumi or
company. Each of these has a kind of manager who is
elected on a limited suffrage. The managers of the kumi,
it was explained, are " like diplomatists if something is
wanted against another village." The kumi also seems to
have some corporate life. There is once a month a semi-
social, semi-religious meeting at each member's house in
turn. The persons who attend lay before the house shrine
8 or 5 sen each or a small quantity of rice for the feast.
The master of the house provides the sauce or pickles.
I heard also of a kind of ko called mujin, a word which has
also the meaning of " inexhaustible." By such agencies
as these money is collected for people who are poor or for
men who want help in their business or who need to go on
a journey.

We have seen that the village is by every token well off.
What are its troubles ? Undoubtedly the people work
hard. I imagine, however, that there are very many
districts where the people work much harder. The
foreigner is too apt to confuse working hard with working
continuously. Whether outdoors or indoors, whether at a
handicraft or at business, an Oriental gives the impression
of having no notion of getting his work done and being
finished with it. The working day lasts all day and part of
the night. Whether much more is done in the time than in
the shorter Western day may be doubted. During the brief
silk- worm season many of the women of the village in which
I stayed are afoot for a long day and for part of the night,
but the winter brings relief from the strain of all sorts of
work. Owing to the snow it is practically impossible to do
any work out of doors in January, February and March.
The snow may stop work even in December. Here, then,
is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors
the women have much of a holiday is uncertain. But
indoors should not be taken too exactly. There is some
hunting in the winter. Deer come within two miles and
hares are easily got.

Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to
increase incomes. The people are working harder than they
have done in the past because the cost of living has risen.

A NEW RURAL TYPE"

279

An attempt is to be made to increase secondary employ-
ments. Corporately, the village is said to possess 10,000
yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that this
money is lent out to some of the more influential people.
What the security is and how safe the monetary resources
of a village loaned out in this way may be I do not know,
but there is obviously some risk and I gathered that some
anxiety existed.

The people of the village, like a large proportion of the
population of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive.
Nagano is full of what someone called " a new rural type "
of men who
read and de-
light in going
to lectures.
Lectures are a
great institu-
tion in Na-
gano. For
these lectures
country peo-
ple tramp into
a county town
in their waraji
carrying their
bento. To
these rustics
a lecture is
a lecture. A

friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one
occasion for seven hours. It is true that he divided the
lecture between two days and allowed himself a half hour's
rest in the middle of each three and a half hours' section.
He started with an audience of 500. On the first day at
the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed that
the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second
day about 100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it
was the townsfolk, not the country people, who left.

I found upon enquiry that in the village in which I had
been living there had been one arrest only during the
20

A Cradle

280 "BON" SEASON SCENES

previous year. The charge was one of theft. Half a
dozen other people had got into trouble but their arrests
had been " postponed." Two of these six delinquents had
" caused fire accidentally," two had been guilty of petty
theft, and the remaining two had sold things of small value
which did not belong to them. During the twelve months
there had been no charges of immorality and no gambling.
Perhaps, however, there may have been police admonitions.
It seemed to have been a long time since there had been a
case of what we should call illegitimacy or of a child being
born in the first months of a young couple's marriage.
Someone mentioned, however, that the girls who went to
the silk factories were, as a consequence of their life there,
" debased morally and physically."

A notable thing in the village was four fires, two the month
before we arrived and two while we were there. They
were suspected to have been the work of a person of weak
intellect. (As in our own villages half a century ago, there
is in every community at least one " natural.") On the
night of the first fire we were awakened about 3 a.m. by
shouting, by the clanging of the fire bell and by the booming
of the great bell in the temple yard. The fire was about
four houses away. It was a still night and the flames and
sparks went straight up. As the possibility of the wind
shifting and the fire spreading could not be entirely
excluded we quickly got our more important possessions
on the engawa — at least a young maidservant did so. The
continual experience which the Japanese have of fires makes
them self-possessed on these occasions, and this girl had
futon, bags, etc., neatly tied in big furoshiki (wrapping
cloths) in the shortest possible time. It was only when she
was satisfied that our belongings were in readiness for easy
removal that she went to look after her own. The matter-
of-fact, fore-sighted, neat way in which she got to work was
admirable. With great kindness one of the elders of the
village came hurriedly to the temple, evidently thinking we
should feel alarmed, and cried out, " Yoroshii, Yoroshii "
(" All right ").

As I stood before the blaze what struck me most was
the orderUness and quiet of the crowd and the way in

AT THE FIRE

281

which whatever help was needed was at once forthcoming
without fuss. The fire brigades were working in an orderly
way and everything was so
well managed that the scene
seemed almost as if it were
being rehearsed for a cinema.
One difference between what
I saw and what would be
seen at home at a fire was
that the scene was well
lighted from the front, for
the members of the fire
brigades carried huge
lanterns on high poles.
From the mass of old wet
reed in the roadway I judged
that the first act of the fire-
men had been to use their
long hooks to denude the
roof of the burning house
of its thatch,
which in the
lightest wind is so
dangerous to sur-
rounding dwell-
ings. Nobody in
the village is in-
sured, but the
neighbours seem
to meet about a
third of the loss
caused by a fire.
It is an illustra-
tion of local
values that a
larger subscrip-
tion than 2 yen
would not be
accepted from me
mentioned to me that incendiarism is specially prevalent

FiKE Alarm and Observation Post
In connection with this fire someone

282 "BON" SEASON SCENES

in some prefectures, while in others the use of the knife is
the usual means of wiping out scores. The phrase used by
a person who threatens arson is, " I will make the red worm
creep into your roof."

During the winter there is too much drinking — "generally
by poor men " — but there is said to be less of this than
formerly. Some people stop their newspaper in the summer
and resume taking it during the greater leisure of the winter.
It has been noted, among other small matters, that the
local vocabulary has expanded during the past fifteen years.
During our stay the young midwife, who was going to
America to join her husband, was eager to give her service in
the kitchen for the chance of improving her English. We also
gave help in the evenings thrice a week to one of the school
teacherswho hadmanagedto obtain a fair reading knowledge
of English. The earnestness with which these two people
studied was touching. While I was in the village the young
men's association began the issue of a magazine. Litho-
graphic ink was brought to me so that I might contribute in
autograph as well as in translation. The association, which
receives 10 yen a year from the village, cultivates several plots
of paddy and dry land. The bigger schoolboys drilled with
imitation rifles, imitation bayonets and imitation cartridges.

I felt that I should know more about the villagers if I
could learn, like Synge, their topics of conversation when no
stranger was present. One day while strolling with a friend
I asked him what was being said by two girls who were
working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by
a hedge (hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told
me that one was enhancing to her companion the tremend-
ous dignity of the Crown Prince by exaggerating grotesquely
the size of the house he lived in, which reminded me of the
servant who told her friend that " Queen Victoria was so
rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the
conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people
and prices. Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which
were most popular, " because they provoked hilarity,"
were family discords and sexual questions. One man with
whom I spoke about the moraUty of the village said
cautiously, " They say there are some moneylenders here."

IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE
CHAPTER XXXII

PROGKESS OF SORTS
(SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

I am not of those who look for perfection amongst the rural popula-
tion.— BOBROW

The torrents that foam down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap
source of electricity, and, though the guide book may not
stress the fact, it is possible that the first glimpse of the
unutterable splendours of the sacred mountain may be
gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper or silk
factory. The farmers welcomed the factories when they
found that factory contributions to local rates eased the
burden of the agricultural population. The farmers also
realised that to the factories were due electric light, the
telephone, better roads and more railway stations. The
farmers are undoubtedly better off. They are so well off
indeed that the district can afford an agricultural expert
of its own, children may be seen wearing shoes instead of
geta, and the agriculturists themselves occasionally sport
coats cut after a supposedly Western fashion. But the
people, it was insisted, have become a little " sly," and
girls return from the factories less desirable members of
the community.

Mention of these matters led an agricultural authority
whom I met during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself
on the general question of the condition of the farmer in
Japan. He expressed the opinion that 10 per cent, of the
farmers were in a " wretched condition." Big holdings — if
any holdings in Japan can be called big — were getting
bigger ; it was an urgent question how to secure the position

283

284 PROGRESS OF SORTS

of the owners of the small and the medium-sized classes
of holding. The fact that many rural families were in
debt, not for seed or manure but for food spoke for itself.
The amounts might seem trivial in Western eyes, but when
the average income was only 350 yen a year a debt of 80
yen was a serious matter ; and 80 yen was the average debt
of farming families in the prefecture of Shidzuoka. No one
could say that the farmers were lazy : they were working
hard according to their lights. They were working too
hard, perhaps, on the limited food they got. There could
be no doubt that the physical condition of the countryman
was being lowered.

Again, there was the fact of the rural exodus — the
phrase sounded strangely in the middle of a Japanese sen-
tence. As to the causes, the first unquestionably was that
thefarmer had not enough land on which to makealiving. If
the farmer could have 5 acres or thereabouts he would be
well off. But the average area per farmer in the prefecture
in which we were travelling was a little less than 2| acres.
High taxes were another cause of the farmer's present con-
dition. Then a year's living would be mortgaged for the
expenses of a marriage ceremony. At a funeral, too, the
neighbours came to eat and drink. They took charge of
the kitchen and even ordered in food. (After a Japanese
feast the guests are given at their departure the food that is
left over.) Further, some farmers wasted their substance on
the ambitions of local politics. Again, conscripts who had
gone off to the army hatless and wearing straw shoes came
home hatted and sometimes booted. Military service de-
prived farmers of labour, and their boys while away asked
their parents for money. Conscription pressed more heavily
on the poor because the sons of well-to-do people continued
their education to the middle school, and attendance at a
middle school entitled a young man to reduction of military
service to one year only.'

The countryside was suffering from the way in which

importance was increasingly attached to industry and

commerce. Many M.P.s were of the agricultural class,

but they were chiefly landlords, and they were often share-

1 See Appendix LXIII.

SCHOOLGIRLS' TABLETS 285

holders and directors of industrial companies. There was
very little real Parliamentary representation of the farming
class and it had not yet found literary expression. There
were signs, however, that some landlords were realising
that industry and agriculture were not of equal importance.
But the farmers were slow to move. The traditions of the
Tokugawa epoch survived, making action difficult. Finally,
there was the drawback to rural development which exists
in the family system. But that, as Mr. Pickwick said,
comprises by itself a difficult study of no inconsiderable
magnitude, and we must return to it on another occasion.

In one of my excursions I went over a large agricultural
school, the boast of which was that of all the youths who had
passed through it, twenty only had deserted the land. I
met the present scholars marching with military tread,
mattocks on shoulders, to the school paddies.

I noticed schoolgirls wearing a wooden tablet. It was a
good-conduct badge. If a girl was not wearing it on reaching
home her parents knew that her teacher had retained it
because of some fault ; if she was not wearing it at school
her teacher knew that her parents had kept it back for a
similar reason. The girls when they come to school have
often baby brothers or sisters tied on their backs. Other-
wise the girls would have to stay at home in order to look
after them. I asked a schoolmaster what happened when
children were kept at home. He said that when a child
had been absent a week he called twice on the parents in
order to remonstrate. If there was no result he reported
the matter to the village authorities, who administered two
warnings. Failing the return of the truant a report was
made by the village authorities to the county authorities.
They summoned the father to appear before them. This
meant loss of time and the cost of the journey. Should the
parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5 to 10 yen
for disobedience to authority and up to 30 yen for not
sending his child to school.

I found that a local philanthropic association had provided
the speaker's school with a supply of large oil-paper-covered
umbrellas so that children who had come unprovided could
go home on a rainy day without a parent, elder brother

286 PROGRESS OF SORTS

or sister having to leave work to bring an umbrella to
school.

In the playground of this school there was a low platform
before which the children assembled every morning. The
headmaster, standing on the platform, gravely saluted the
children and the children as gravely responded. The
scholars also bowed in the direction of Tokyo, in the centre
of which is the Emperor's palace. An inscription hanging
in the school was, " Exert yom:self to kill harmful insects."
In another school there was a portrait of a former teacher
who had covered the walls of the school with water-colours
of local scenery. I noticed in the playground of a third
school a flower-covered cairn and an inscribed slab to the
memory of a deceased master. Every school possesses
equipment taken from the enemy during the Russo-
Japanese war, usually a shell, a rifle and bayonet and an
entrenching spade.

In this prefecture I heard of young men's associations'
efforts to discourage " cheek binding," which is the wearing
of the head towel in such a way as to disguise the face and
so enable the cheek binder to do, if he be so minded, things
he might not do if he were recognisable.

One day I made my headquarters in a town that had just
been rebuilt after a fire. Within four hours the blaze aided
by a strong wind had consumed 1,700 houses and caused
the deaths of nine persons. The destruction of so many
dwellings is wrought by bits of paper or thatch, or the hght
pieces of wood from the shoji, which are carried aflame by
the wind, setting fire to several houses simultaneously.

Beside street gutters I came across little stone jizo, the
cheerful-looking guardian deities of the children playing
near ; but they looked as incongruous in the position they
occupied as did a small shrine which was standing in the
shadow of a gasometer.

I heard of contracts under which girls served as nurse
girls in private families. A poor farmer may enter into a
contract when his girl is five for her to go into service at
eight. He receives cash in anticipation of the fulfilment of
the contract.

I was assured by a man competent to speak on the matter

A "SLAVE SYSTEM" 287

that a certain small town was notorious for receiving boys
who had been stolen as small children from their homes in
the hills. Up to 30 yen might be given for a boy. There
might be a dozen of such unfortunates in the place. Happily
many of the children obtained by this " slave system," as
my informant called it, ran away as soon as they were old
enough to realise how they had been treated.

I visited a well-known rural reformer in the village which
he and his father had improved under the precepts of
Ninomiya. The hillside had been covered with tea,
orange trees and mulberry ; the community had not only
got out of debt but had come to own land beyond its
boundaries ; gambling, drunkenness and immorality, it
was averred, had " disappeared " ; there were larger and
better crops ; and " the habit of enjoying nature " had
increased. The amusements of the village were wrestling,
fencing, jujitsu and the festivals.

I heard here a story of how a bridge which was often
injured by storms was as often mysteriously repaired. On
a watch being kept it was found that the good work was
done by a villager who had been scrupulous to keep
secret his labours for the public welfare. Another tale
was of a poor man who bought an elaborate shrine and
brought it to his humble dwelling. On his neighbours
suggesting that a finer house were a fitter resting-place for
such a shrine, the man rephed : " I do not think so. My
shrine is the place of my parents and ancestors, and may
be fine. But the place in which the shrine stands is my
place ; it need not be fine."

In travelling the roads notices are often seen on official-
looking boards with pent roofs. But all of these notices
are not official ; one I copied was the advertisement of a
shrine which declared itself to be unrivalled for tooth-
ache. The horses on the roads are sometimes protected
from the sun by a kind of oblong sail, which works on a
swivel attached to the harness. Black velvety butterflies
as big as wrens flit about. (There are twice as many
butterflies and moths in Japan as at home). Snakes,
ordinarily of harmless varieties, are frequently seen, dead
or alive.

288 PROGRESS OF SORTS

Many of the people one passes are smoking, usually the
little brass pipe used both by men and women, which,
like some of the earliest English pipes, does not hold more
tobacco than will provide a few draws. The pipe is usually
charged twice or thrice in succession. One notices an
immense amount of cigarette smoking, which cannot be
without ill effect. There is a law forbidding smoking below
the age of twenty. It is not always enforced, but when
enforced there is a confiscation of smoking materials and a
fining of the parents. The voices of many middle-aged
women and some young ones are raucous owing to excessive
smoking of pipes or cigarettes.

I looked into a school and saw the wall inscription,
" Penmanship is like pulling a cart uphill. There must be
no haste and no stopping." Here, as in so many places, I
saw the well-worn cover and much-thumbed pages of Self
Help. I may add a fact which would be in its place in a
new edition of Smiles' s Character. As a simple opening
to conversation I often asked if a man had been in Europe
or America. His answer, if he had not travelled, was never
" No." It was always " Not yet."

In these country schools most of the songs are set to
Western tunes. Such airs as " Ye Banks and Braes,"
" Auld Lang Syne," " Annie Laurie," " Home, Sweet
Home " and " The Last Rose of Summer " are utilised for
the songs not only of school children but of university
students. Few of the singers have any notion that the
music was not written in their own land. A Japanese
friend told me that all the airs I mentioned " seem tender
and touching to us," and I remember a Japanese agricul-
tural expert saying, " Reading those poems of Burns, I
believe firmly that our hearts can vibrate with yours."

As I have denied myself the pleasure of dwelling on Jap-
anese scenic beauties, I may not pause to bear witness to the
faery delights of cherry blossom which I enjoyed everywhere
during this journey. But I may record two cherry-blossom
poems I gathered by the way. The first is, " Why do you
Wear such a long sword, you who have come only to see the
cherry blossoms ? " The second is, " Why fasten your
horse to the cherry tree which is in full bloom, when the

LADYBIRDS AND PEARS 289

petals would fall off if the horse reared ? " A Japanese
once told me that a foreigner had greatly surprised him by
asking if the cherry trees bore much fruit.

Orange as well as tea culture is a feature of the agricul-
tural life of the prefecture. As in California and South
Africa, ladybirds have been reared in large numbers in order
to destroy scale. I saw at the experiment station miserable
orange trees encaged for producing scale for the breeding
ladybirds. The insects are distributed from the station
chiefly as larvae. They are sent through the post about a
hundred at a time in boxes. The ladybird, which has, I
believe, eight generations a year, and as an adult lives some
twenty days, lays from 200 to 250 eggs, 150 of the larvae
from which may survive. Alas for the released ladybirds
of Shidzuoka ! Scale is said to be disappearing so quickly
that they are having but a hard life of it.

In the neighbouring prefecture of Kanagawa I paid a
visit to a gentleman who, with his brother, had devoted
himself extensively to fruit and flower growing. Their
produce was sent the twenty-six hours' journey by road to
Tokyo, where four shops were maintained. A considerable
quantity of foreign pears had been produced on the palmette
verrier system. The branches of the extensively grown
native pear are everywhere tied to an overhead framework
which completely covers in the land on which the trees
stand. This method was adopted in order to cope with
high winds and at the same time to arrest growth, for in the
damp soil in which Japanese pears are rooted, the branches
would be too sappy. Foreign pears are not more generally
cultivated because they come to the market in competition
with oranges, and the Japanese have not yet learnt to
buy ripe pears. The native pear looks rather like an
enormous russet apple but it is as hard as a turnip, and,
though it is refreshing because of its wateriness, has little
flavour. Progress is being made with peaches and apricots.
Figs are common but inferior. A fine native fruit, when
well grown, is the biwa or loquat. And homage must be
paid to the best persimmons, which yield place only to
oranges and tangerines.' In the north the apples are good,
1 See Appendix LV.

290 PROGRESS OF SORTS

but most orchards are badly in need of spraying. Experi-
ments have been made with dates. Flowers have a weaker
scent than in Europe. A rose called the " thousands " —
a ri is two and a half miles — has only a slight perfume two
and a half inches away, and then only when pulled. I met
with no heather — it is to be seen in Saghalien, which has
several things in common with Scotland — but found masses
of sweet-scented thyme.

One of the horticulturists to whom I have referred was
something of an Alpinist and was married to a Swiss lady.
They had several children. I also met an American lady
who had had great experience of fruit growing in California,
had married a Japanese farmer there, and had come to live
with him in a remote part of his native country. From such
alliances as these there may come some day a woman's
impressions of the life and work of women and girls on the
farms and in the factories of rural Japan. Many a visitor
to the country districts must have marked the dumbness
of the women folk. Women were often present at the
conversations I had in country places, but they seldom
put in a word. I was received one day at the house of a
man who is well known as a rural philanthropist — he has
indeed written two or three brochures on the problems of
the country districts — but when he, my friend and I sat at
table his wife was on her knees facing us two rooms off.
Every instructed person knows that there is a beautiful
side to the self-suppression of the Japanese woman — many
moving stories might be told — and that the "subservience "
is more apparent than real. But there is certainly un-
merited suffering. The men and women of the Far East
seem to be gentler and simpler, however, than the vehement
and demonstrative folk of the West, and conditions which
appear to the foreign observer to be unjust and unbearable
cannot be easily and accurately interpreted in Western
terms. At present many women who are conscious of the
situation of their sex see no means of improvement by their
own efforts. But the development of the women's move-
ment is proceeding in some directions at a surprising pace.
Many young men are sincerely desirous to do their part in
bringing about greater freedom. They realise what is un-

POST-GRADUATE FOREIGN TRAVEL 291

doubtedly true that not a few things which urgently need
changing in Japan must be changed by men and women
working together.

Money has always been forthcoming, officially, semi-
officially and privately, for sending to America and Europe
numbers of intelligent young men and women. So dis-
ciphned and studious are most of these young people that
their country has had back with interest every yen of the
funds so wisely provided. We have much to learn from
Japanese methods in this matter of well-considered post-
graduate foreign travel.'

' See Appendix LVI.

CHAPTER XXXIII

green tea and black
(shidzuoka)

Things I would know but am forbid
By time and briefness.

Laubenoe Binyon

MoRE than half of the tea grown in Japan comes from the
hilly coast-wise prefecture of Shidzuoka through which
every traveller passes on his journey from Kobe or Kyoto
to Tokyo. He sees a terraced cultivation of tea and fruit
carried up to the skyline. But there is more tea on the
hills than the passenger in the train imagines. When viewed
from below much of the tea looks like scrub. In various
parts of southern Japan patches of tea may be noticed
growing on little islands in the paddies, but tea is a hill
plant and it is on the sides of hills and on the plateaus at
the top of them that the plantations are to be found.

Tea looks not unlike privet and grows or is made to grow
like box to a height which can be conveniently picked over.
The rows of neat-looking plants are half a dozen feet apart.
The first picking may take place when the bush is three or
four years old. Bushes may last forty, fifty or even a hun-
dred years, but the ordinary life of tea is between twenty
and thirty. A bush is usually cut back every ten years or
so. A good deal depends on the pruning. After each
picking the bushes are cut over with the shears just as we
trim box. These trimmings may be used to make an
inferior tea for farmhouse consumption, or they may be
utilised in the manufacture of caffeine or theine — the two
products are indistinguishable. Usually the bushes are
cut round-topped, but occasionally they are roof-shaped
and sometimes they are like giant green toadstools.

292

TO "PICK UP WIVES" 298

The characteristic feature of a tea district beyond the
rows of tea bushes is the chimney piping of the farmhouses
which manufacture their own tea. (The word manufacture
is used in the original sense, for farmhouse tea is hand-made.)
In a country where the houses are chimneyless these
galvanised iron chimneys are conspicuous.

The picking of the tea seems to be done almost entirely
by women and children. The pickers are supposed to take
only the three leaves at the tips. But the pickers mostly
take bigger pieces, for the somewhat higher price given for
good picking is not enough to secure three-leaf stuff only.
It is not absolutely necessary, however, that the leaves
gathered should be all of such a choice sort.

Women and girls come from a distance to pick tea.
Picking is regarded as " polite labour by the daughters of
the higher middle class of farmers." It has also the
attraction that farmers' sons have a way of visiting tea
gardens in order to " pick up wives." The girls certainly
give would-be husbands every chance of seeing what they
can do, for they are at work for a long day, often of from
twelve to fourteen hours. In such a day it is possible, I was
told, to pick 50, 80 or even 100 lbs. of leaves. One man put
the rate as from 50 to 120 pieces a minute. Four pounds
of leaves make a pound of tea.

In one district the first picking may take place during
the first three weeks of May. In colder districts it is pro-
ceeding until the end of the month. The second season is
from the end of June until the beginning of July. The
third is in August. The bushes, after producing their
three crops of leaves, bear in November their seeds, which
are about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and are
worth about a sen a pound. Oil is pressed from
them.

Good tea depends on climate and soil, careful cutting
over and good manuring. In some places I saw soya bean
being grown between the rows as green manuring. Like
so many other crops, tea is or ought to be sprayed. The
northern limit of tea is Niigata, where the bushes must be
protected from the snow, which may fall in that prefecture
to a great depth. The region in which tea cannot be

294 GREEN TEA AND BLACK

grown is that in which the temperature falls below zero
for two months.

Tea is not grown, as in India and Ceylon, by tea planters,
but in small areas and as a side-Une at that. I never saw
a plantation of more than five acres. Most areas are much
smaller. The chief reason for this is that tea is largely
manufactured on the day on which it is picked and the
capacity of a farmer's tea manufacturing equipment is
limited. In Shidzuoka nearly a quarter of the tea is hand
rolled and three-quarters made by machinery. Elsewhere
in Japan half the crop may be hand rolled.

When leaves are sold to factors the transactions take
place in booths opened by them in the tea districts. It is a
busy scene in the region of the cottage factories. One is
on a wide p^^teau covered almost entirely with rows of tea
plants. Here and there are parties of chattering pickers,
their heads protected by the national towel. Against the
blue hilltops on the horizon stand out the cottages of
the farmers with chimney-pipes smoking, the booths of the
dealers, and, in every patch of tea, the thatched roof
over the precious sunken pot of liquid manure by which the
tea bushes have so often benefited. On the road one passes
women with baskets on their backs, like Scotch fish-wives
with their creels, men carrying two baskets suspended from
a pole across one shoulder, or a man and his wife hauling a
barrow, all heavy-laden with newly picked leaves. Small
horse-drawn wagons carry the manufactured tea in big,
well-tied, pink paper bales. On the whole, although the
labour is hard it seemed a better life having to do with
the fragrant tea than with the rice of the sludge ponds in
the valley below.

The tea produced in Japan is principally green tea.
Most of this is of the kind called sencha — cha means tea.
An inferior article made out of older and tougher leaves is
called bancha. The custom is for the maid who serves
bancha to heat the leaves over the charcoal fire just before
infusing. This gives it an agreeable roasted flavour. It
is often served in a darker shade of porcelain than is used
for ordinary tea. There are also the finer teas, kikicha
(powdered tea) and gyoUuro (jewelled dewdrops), which is

BACK FOB DRYING KIOE. p. 77

TILLAGE CKEMATOHIDM. p. 48

DOG HELPUrU TO PULL
JINBIKISHA

AUTHOR, ME. YAIIASAKI AND
YOUNGEST INHABITANTS, p. 809

2041

THE POWER OP THE GUILD 295

the best kind of sencha. Black tea was being made experi-
mentally when I first arrived in Japan. Brick tea (pressed
to the consistency and weight of wood) may be green or
black. Most of the exported tea, other than brick tea,
goes to America.

It is unnecessary to state that the Japanese tea-tray does
not include a sugar basin, cream jug or spoons. It does
include, however, a sqnat, oval jug into which the hot water
from the kettle is poured in order to lower the temperature
below boihng point. Boiling water would bring out a bitter
flavour from the tea. Made with water just below boiling
point the tea is deliciously soft, even oily, and has a flavour
and aroma which cream and sugar would ruin. It is cer-
tainly refreshing, and, when drunk newly infused, relatively
harmless. Bancha is made with hotter water than other
tea. The handleless cups hold about half of what our tea-
cups contain.' Tea is not the only plant used for making
"tea." One drinks in some parts infusions of cherry,
plum or peach blossom.

The processes of tea manufacture in farmers' outhouses
and in factories are described in school-books, and I need
not transcribe my impressions.' But I may note that
some of the money the tea farmer earns for the country is
spent in his interests. There is in Shidzuoka a well-directed
prefectural experiment station which exercises itself over
problems of tea production. Every tea grower and tea
dealer in the prefecture must belong to the prefectural tea
guild. He must also belong to his county tea guild. The
rules of the guilds — ^there is a central guild in Tokyo — have
the force of law. Evil doers in the tea industry have their
product confiscated. Tea dealers who do not carry their
guild membership card are fined. It is not difficult to
discover colouring in tea if it is rubbed on white paper.
The Government's part in subduing tea colouring was to
seize all the dye stuff it could lay hold of which could be
used for colouring tea.

' At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for less
than a penny a pot of tea and a cup — you are entitled to keep both pot
and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept hot with
charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.

' For statistics and theine percentages, see Appendix LVII.
21

296 GREEN TEA AND BLACK

The future of green tea depends almost entirely on the
demand from the growing population of Japan, but a taste
for the " foreign style " black tea — with condensed milk —
is spreading. The cheap labour of India and China and the
big plantations and factories of India have diminished the
Japanese green tea trade and the effort to produce black
tea is also met by foreign competition. I was told that
China tea receives much sunshine while growing, and that
there was most hope for Japanese black tea when made from
leaves grown in the extreme south. There is a difference
between the Chinese and the Japanese tea plant and it
cannot be got over by importing Chinese plants, for the
climate of Japan simply Japanises the imported sort.

I found in the United States that green tea is bought, as
it is no doubt sold in Shidzuoka, on appearance. American
housewives were pajdng for an appearance that matters
little in an article that is not to be looked at but soaked.
Not only is much extra labour required for sifting the leaf
several times in order to obtain a good appearance, but the
bulk is reduced from 5 to 10 per cent. The drinking quality
of the tea also suffers, for the largest leaf has usually the
best cup quality. If teas were bought for cup quality only
they might be at least from 5 to 10 per cent, cheaper.

EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

CHAPTER XXXIV

a country doctok and his neighbours
(chiba)

What was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided
excursions and gleaned as industry should find or chance should o£Eer. —
Johnson

When I first went to Chiba, the peninsular prefecture lying
across the bay from Tokyo, many carriages in the trains
were heated by iron hibachi ' with pieces of old carpet thrown
over them. It is on the Chiba trains that the recruits of
that section of the army which has to do with the operation
of the railways learn their business. It is in part of Chiba — •
and also in a district in Tokyo prefecture — that the earliest
rice is grown. Chiba also contains more poultry than any
other prefecture." It has the further distinction of having
tried to issue truthful crop statistics.'

Wherever one goes in Japan one is impressed by the
large consumption of fish — fresh, dried, and salted. Thin
slices of raw fish make one of the tasty dishes at a Japanese
meal. The foreigner, forgetting the Western relish for
oysters and clams, is repelled by this raw fish, but a liking
for it seems to be quickly acquired. In Tokyo the slices
of raw fish are cut from the meaty bonito (tunny), but tai
(bream) is also used. Bonito also provides the long narrow
steaks, dried to a mahogany-like hardness, which are known
as katsubushi. This katsubushi keeps indefinitely and is

' The Japanese firepot, which is made of wood or porcelain as well as
metal, contains pieces of charcoal smouldering in wood ash.

» I saw poultry of the table breeds which we call Indian Game or Malay ;
the Japanese call them Siamese.

» See Appendix LVIII.

297

298 A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

grated or shaved with a kind of plane and used much as the
Western cook employs Parmesan cheese,

I heard a man in Chiba combating very strongly the idea
of there being a connection between leprosy and fish eating.
As to leprosy, it is doubtful if the belief expressed by the
Chinese name for the disease, " heavenly punishment,"
has disappeared. There are at least 24,000 lepers in Japan,
and as a well-known Japanese work of reference casually
remarks, " the hospitals can at present accommodate only
5 per cent, of them."

I could not but compare the undulating countryside, on
which so vast an amount of labour had been expended,
with what it would have been under European treatment
and the influence of an European climate — possibly
picturesque pasture with high hedges. The congeries of
rice fields was fringed, where the water supply had given
out, with upland cultivation. On the low mud walls which
separated the paddies beans grew except at a boundary
corner, where a tea or mulberry bush served as a landmark.
In looking down or up the little valleys one saw how com-
pletely the houses had been brushed aside to the foot of the
low hills so that no land cultivable as paddies should be
wasted. This intensely developed countryside was not
however ideal land. It was often much too sandy. Not
a few paddies had to depend to some extent on the water
they could catch for themselves. A naturally draughty
and hungry land was yielding crops by a laborious manurial
improvement of its physical and chemical condition, by
wonders being wrought in rural hydraulics and by unending
industry in cultivation and petty engineering.

It might be supposed that beauty had gone from the
countryside. Some of what the land agents call the
amenities of the district had certainly disappeared. There
seemed to be nowhere for the pedestrian to sit down in
order to refresh himself with those rural sights and sounds
which exhilarate the spirit. But this marvellously delved,
methodised and trimmed countryside had a character and
a stimulus of its own. It reflected the energy and persist-
ence that had subdued it. I saw nothing ugly. The tidied
rice plots, shaped at every possible curve and angle, and

CARRYING OFF HILLS 299

eloquent of centuries of unremitting toil ; the upland
beyond them, worked to a skilled perfection of finish ;
the nesting houses which nowhere offended the eye ; the
big still ponds contrived by the rude forefathers of the
hamlet for water storage or the succour of the rice in the
hottest weather ; the low hilltops green with pine because
cultivation could not ascend so far, and hiding here and
there a Shinto sanctuary: such a countryside was satis-
fying in its own way.

In Chiba, as in other prefectures, one is impressed by
the way in which the exertions of many generations have
resulted in the levelling of wide areas and even the com-
plete removal of small hills. In many places one can still
see low hills in process of demolition. In Tokyo itself
several small hills have been carried off in recent years.

I was in Chiba several times and I remember to have
noticed one winter day with what considered roughness
the paddies had been dug in order tb receive from frost and
sun the benefits which are as good as a manuring. Some
notion of the strength of the weather forces at work may be
gathered from the fact that, though I was walking without
an overcoat and was glad to shade my eyes by pulling down
the brim of my hat, the frost of the two previous nights had
produced ice on the paddies an inch thick.

Sometimes at the irrigation reservoirs one may see
notice boards announcing that these water areas are
stocked with koi (carp). This fish is also kept in the paddies.
The carp are put in as yearlings or two-year-olds, when the
paddies are flooded, and a score out of every hundred come
out in the autumn — assuming the happiest conditions —
ten inches or so long. Carp culture flourishes in the seri-
culture districts, where the pupae which remain when the
cocoons are unwound are thrown to the fish ; but pupse
fed carp have a flavour which diminishes their value.
Indeed paddy-field fish, which on the whole must have a
rather troubled existence, do not bring the price of river
carp. Other fish than carp, eels for instance, are also kept
in paddies.'

1 In 1918 carp was produced to the value of a million and a half yen and
eels to the value of nearly a million.

300 A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

I visited a vigorous personality who was at once a land-
owner and rural oculist, as his father and grandfather had
been before him. He had graduated at Tokyo and had
kept himself abreast of German specialist literature. There
was accommodation for about a hundred patients in the
buildings attached to his house. He believed in the
efficacy in eye cases of " the air of the rice fields," not to
speak of the shrine which overlooks the patients' quarters.
As the number of blind people in Japan is appalling,' it
was interesting to hear the opinion that the chief causes
were gonorrhoea, inadequate attention at birth, insufficient
nourishment in childhood and nervous disease — all more
or less preventible. Nearly a quarter of my host's patients
had had their eyes wounded by rice-stem points while stoop-
ing in the paddies. As the people are hurt in the busy
season they often put off coming for help until it is too late.

The landowner-oculist's premises were lighted by natural
gas from a depth of 900 ft. According to a fellow-guest,
who happened to be an expert in this matter, natural gas
is to be had all over Japan.'

The room in which I slept belonged to a part of the house
which was of great age, but by ray futon there was laid an
electric torch.

A pleasant thing during my visit was the presence of a
dozen intelligent, kindly students who early in the evening
came and knelt in a semicircle round us, "in order to
profit by our talk." One of them, a son of the house, an
athlete (and now, after travelling in Europe, his father's
successor), did all sorts of services for me during my stay,
in the simple-hearted fashion that shows such an attractive
side of the Japanese character. One question asked by the
students was, " For what reasons does Sensei believe that
the influence of women in public life would be good ? "
Another enquiry was, " Which are the best London and
Paris papers ? " These lads could hardly hope to get
through the university before they were twenty-five or
twenty-six. Yet, compared with our undergraduates,
they had very little time for general reading, discussions

1 See Appendix LIX. ' See Appendix LX.

THE STUDENTS' BURDEN 301

and outdoor sports. I remember a man of some experience
in the educational world saying to me, " Our students do
not read enough apart from their studies ; it is their
misfortune." They have not only the burden of having
to learn nearly several thousand ideographs,' three scripts
and Japanese and Chinese pronunciation. They have to
acquire Western languages, which, owing to their absolute
dissimilarity from Oriental tongues — for example, the
word for "I" is watakushi — must be learnt entirely from
memory. It is not that the Japanese student does not
begin early as well as leave off late. A professor once said
to me, " For some little time after I first went to school I
was still fed from the bosom of my mother." In some
ways it is no doubt a source of strength for Japan that her
men can spend from their earliest years to the age of twenty-
six on the acquirement of knowledge and self-discipline' —
the privileges of the student class and the generosity of
their families and friends and the public at large are re-
markable— but the disadvantages are plain. No sight
seems stranger to a new arrival in Japan than that of so
many men in their middle or late twenties still wearing the
conspicuous kimono and German bandsman cap of the
student.

To return to our host, he told us that tenants were
" getting clever." They were paying their rent in " worse
and worse qualities of rice." The landlords " encouraged "
their tenants with gifts of tools, clothes or sake in order that
they might bring them the best rice, but the tenants evi-
dently thought it paid better to forgo these benefits and
market their best rice. This raises the question whether
rent ought nowadays to be paid in kind. Rural opinion as
a whole is in favour of continuing in the old way, but there
is a clear-headed if small section of rural reformers which
is for rent being paid in cash.

One thing I found in my notes of my talk with the

1 To oite a Tford already used in these pages, there are hajf a dozen worda
spelt ko and as many as fourteen spelt ko, but all have a different ideo-
graph. When the prolongation of the educational ooiu'se by the ideographs
ia dwelt on, it is wholesome for us to remember Professor Gilbert Murray's
declaration that "English spelling entails a loss of one year in the child's
school time." Other authorities have considered the loss to be much more.

302 A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

landowner-oculist I hesitated to transcribe without confir-
mation. Speaking of the physique of the people, he had
said that few farmers could carry the weights their fathers
and grandfathers could move about. But later on a high
agricultural authority mentioned to me that it had been
found necessary to reduce the weight of a bale of rice from
19 to 18 kwamme and then to 15 — 1 kwamme is 8-26 lbs.

In the oaza in which I was sta3dng there were eighty
families. Seventy were tenants. Under a savings arrange-
ment initiated by my host, the hamlet, including its five
peasant proprietors, was saving 120 yen a month. On the
other hand, more than half the tenants were in debt " in
connection with family excesses," such as weddings, births
and burials. But there might be unknown savings. I
should state that the villagers seemed contented enough.

For some reason or other I was particularly struck by
the sturdiness of the small girls. This was interesting
because Chiba had for long an evil reputation for infanticide,
and under a system of infanticide in the Far East it would
be supposed — I have heard this view stoutly questioned —
that more girls die than boys. The landowner-ocuhst was
of opinion that in stating the causes of the low economic
condition of his tenants the abating of infanticide must be
put first. People no longer restricted themselves to three
of a family. The average area available locally was only
6 tan of paddy and 1-2 tan of dry land. In a one-crop dis-
trict in which there was work for only a part of the year
this area was obviously insufl&cient and there was not
enough dry land for mulberries. Then taxation was now
2^ yen per bale of rice (hyo). A third of the rice went in
rent.

I tried to find out what the oaza might be spending on
religion. The Shinto priest seemed to get 5 sen a month
per family, which as there are eighty families would be
48 yen yearly. The Buddhist priest had land attached to
his temple and money was given him at burials and at the
Bon season. The oaza might spend 100 yen a year to send
five pilgrims as far away as Yamagata, on the other side of
Japan. The priests did not seem to count for much.
" Their only concern with the public," I was informed, " is

SAKE FOR ELECTORS 303

to be succoured by it. They are living very painfully.
The Buddhist priests have to send money to their sect at
Kyoto." In one of my strolls I passed the Shinto priest
carrying a rice basket and looking, as my companion said,
" just like any other man." At a shrine I saw a number
of bowls hung up. A hole cut in the bottom of each seemed
a pathetic symbol of need, material or spiritual.

The keeper of the teahouse in the oaza had beenjgiven a
small sum by our host to take himself off, but in the village
of which the oaza formed a part there were two teahouses,
where ten times as much was spent as was laid out on
religion. No one had ever heard of a case of illegitimacy in
the oaza but there had been in the twelve months three
cases which pointed to abortion. It was five years since
there had been an arrest. The young men's association
helped twice a year families whose boys had been con-
scripted.

According to what I was told in various quarters, some
landowners in Chiba did a certain amount of public work
but most devoted themselves to indoor trivialities. The
fact that two banks had recently broken at the next town,
one for a quarter of a million yen, and that a landowner had
lost a total of 30,000 yen in these smashes, seemed to show
that there was a certain amount of money somewhere in
the district. No one appeared to " waste time on politics."
In ten years " there had been one or two politicians," but
" one member of Parliament set a wholesome example by
losing a great deal of money in politics ." As to local politics ,
election to the prefectural assembly seemed to cost about
500 yen. Membership of the village assembly might mean
" a cup of saki apiece to the electors."

I was assured that this hamlet was above the economic
level of the county. The belief was expressed that it could
maintain that position for three or four years. " I do not
feel so much anxiety about the present condition of the
people," my host said ; " they are passive enough : but as
to the future it is a diflicult and almost insoluble question."

" The condition of our rural life is the most difficult
question in Japan," said a fellow guest.

In one of the farmers' houses a girl, with the assistance

304 A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

of a younger brother, was weaving rough matting for bahng
up artificial manure. Near them two Minorcas were lajdng
in open boxes. In this family there were seven children,
" three or four of whom can work." The hired land was
8 tan of paddy and 2 J of dry. There was nothing to the
good at the end df the year. Indeed rice had had to be
borrowed from the landlord. The family was therefore
working merely to keep itself alive. But it looked cheerful
enough. Looking cheerful is, however, a Japanese habit.
The conditions of life here were what many Westerners would
consider intolerable. But it was not Westerners but
Orientals who were concerned, and what one had to try to
guess was how far the conditions were satisfactory to
Eastern imaginations and requirements. The people at
every house I visited — as it happened to be a holiday the
mending of clothing and implements seemed to be in order —
were plainly getting enjoyment from the warm sunshine.
Undoubtedly the long spells of sunshine in the com-
paratively idle period of the year make hard conditions
of life more endurable.

In a very small house which was little more than a shelter,
the father and mother of a tenant were living. It is not
uncommon for old peasants to build a dwelling for them-
selves when they get nearly past work, or sometimes after
the eldest son marries.

I found a 1-cho peasant proprietor playing go and rather
the worse for sake, though it was early in the morning. A
3-cho proprietor was living in a good-sized house which had a
courtyard and an imposing gateway.

On the thatch of one house I noticed a small straw horse
perhaps two feet long. On July 7 such a horse is taken by
young people to the hills, where a bale of grass is tied on its
back. On the reappearance of the figure at the house,
dishes of the ceremonial red rice and of the ordinary food of
the family are set before it. " The offering of other than
horse food indicates," it was explained, " that the desire is
to keep the straw animal as a little deity." Finally the
horse is flung on the roof.

I went some distance to visit an oaza of twenty families.
It was described to me as " well off and peaceful." Alas,

"JUMP LAND" 805

one peasant proprietor had gone to Tokyo, where he had
made money, and on his return had built his second son a
house with Tokyo labour instead of with the labour of his
neighboxtts. So the oaza was " excited with bitter inward
animosity." Like our own hamlets, these oaza in the sun-
shine, seemingly so peaceful, whisper nothing to townsfolk
of their bickerings and feuds.

One of the thatched mud houses I came to was at once a
primitive co-operative sale-and-purchase society and the
clubhouse of the old people of the oaza. The rent the old
folk received from the society was enough to maintain the
building. The oldsters gather from time to time in order
to eat, drink and make merry with gossip and dancing.
Dancing is a possibility for old people because it is swaying,
sliding and attitudinising, with an occasional stamp of the
foot, rather than hopping and whirling. One of the best
amateur dances I have seen was performed by a grandsire.
Such clubhouses, places for the comfort of the ageing
and aged, are found in many villages. Young people are
not admitted. The subscription to this particular club-
house was 2 yen and 3 sho of sak^ on joining and 2 yen a
year.

As we went on our way there was pointed out to me a
house the owner of which had sold half a tan of land for 120
yen and was drinking steadily. He had tried to make
money by opening an open-air village theatre which owing
to rain had been a failure.

I visited an oaza where all the land belonged to the man
I called upon. He assured me that most of his tenants
" made ends meet." The remainder had a deficiency at
the end of the year due to " lack of will to save " and to
their " lack of capital which caused them to pay interest
to manure dealers." A co-operative society had just been
started.

In looking at a map of the village to which some of these
oaza belonged I noticed many holdings tinted a special
colour. These were called " jump land." They consisted
of land subdued from the wild by strangers. The proper-
ties were regarded as belonging to the oaza in which their
cultivators lived.

306 A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

I walked through a bit of woodland which had formerly
been held in common and had been divided up, amid
felicitations no doubt, at the rate of half a tan each to every
family. But the well-to-do people soon got hold of their
poorer neighbours' portions.

In a roughish tract I came on burial grounds. One
portion was set apart for the eight families which recognised
the chief landlord as their head. The graves of lowlier folk
seemed to occur anywhere. Each grave was covered by a
pyramidal mound of sandy earth with a piece of twig stuck
in it. Sometimes a tree had been planted and had grown.
A child's grave had some tiny bowls of food and a clay doll
before a little headstone. By way of shelter for these
offerings there was hung on the headstone a peasant's wide
straw hat. A large beehive-shaped bamboo basket over
another grave was a reminder of the time when a grave
needed such protection in order to save the body from wild
animals.

I saw at a distance in the midst of paddies two tree-
covered mounds, a large one and a small one. They looked
like the grave mounds I had seen in China, but it was
suggested that they were probably on an old frontier line
and marked spots at which ceremonies for scaring off
disease were performed.

In one place I found the people planting plum trees in
order to meet their communal taxation. It was reckoned
that the yield of one tree when it came into full bearing
would defray the taxes of a moderate-sized family.

An open space in a wood was pointed out to me as the
spot on which dead horses were formerly thrown to the
dogs and birds. Nowadays notice was given to the Eta
that a dead horse was to be cast away, and they came and,
after skinning the animal, buried the body. Farther on, on
the high road, I saw an 8 ft. high monument to a local steed
that had died in Manchuria.

One of my further visits to Chiba was in the spring.
The paddies, which had been fallow since November, were
under water ; but much of the stubble had been turned
over with the long-bladed mattock. The seed beds from
which the rice is transplanted to the paddies were a vivid

THE PEASANT AND THE PRISONERS 307

green. On the high ground I saw good clean crops of
barley and wheat, beans and peas, on soil of very moderate
quality.

The name of Funabashi at a station reminded me of a
Japanese friend having told me that it was " famous for a
shrine and a very immoral place." But I afterwards heard
that the keeper of that shrine, " acting from conscientious
motives, gave up his lucrative post and died a poor man."
It is said of one of the most sacred places in Japan that it is
also the " most immoral." Kyoto which contains nine
hundred shrines is also supposed to harbour several
thousand women of bad character.

I passed a place where 25,000 Russian prisoners had been
detained. There was an old peasant there who told his
son that he could not understand why so many Japanese
went abroad at such great cost to see the different peoples
of the world. If they would only stay at home, he said,
they would see them all in turn, for first there had been the
Chinese prisoners, then the Russians and now there were
the Germans.

In the uplands it was peaceful and restful to walk through
the shady lanes between the tree-studded homesteads or
along the road passing between plots of mulberry, tea,
vegetables or grain, cultivated with the care given to plants
in a garden. In the herbage by the roadside, but not
among the crops I need hardly say, I noticed dandelions,
sow thistles, Scots thistles, plantains and some other
familiar weeds.

In the paddies some men wore only a narrow band of red
cotton between their legs joined to a waist string, which,
though convenient wear in paddies, was comically con-
spicuous. I recall a friend's story of a little foreign girl of
seven who stayed with her mother in a Japanese hamlet
and struck up a friendship with a kindly old peasant.
One hot summer day the child came home carrying all her
scanty garments over her arm, and covered with mud to
the waist. In answer to her mother's enquiries the child
said, " Well, mother, Ito San has all his clothes oft, and I
could not go into the paddy to help him with mine on."

I visited an elementary school which was little more than

308 A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

a shed. The roofing was of bark and the paper-covered
window shutters were of the roughest. It said much for
the stamina of the children that they could sit there in bleak
weather. An attempt had been made to shut off the classes
from one another by pieces of thin cotton sheeting fastened
to a string. But such essential furnitm-e, ffom a hygienic
point of view, as benches with backs had been provided,
for it is considered by the national educational authorities
that kneeling in the Japanese manner is inimical to physical
development. I noticed, also, that when the children sang
they had been taught to place their hands on their hips in
order that their chests might benefit from the vocal exercise.
The earnestness and kindliness of the men and women
teachers were evident. All the teachers came to school
bare-foot on geta.^

The sea was not far off and we went to the beach where
there was nothing between us and America. My com-
panion and I were carried over shallows on the backs of
fishermen, wonderful bronze-coloured figures. Above
high-water mark heaps of small fish were drying. They
were to be turned into oil and fish- waste manure. I saw an
earthenware vase with a hole in the bottom like a flowerpot
and found that it was used, with a rope attached to the rim,
for catching octopus. When the octopus comes across
such a vase on the sea bottom he regards it as a shelter
constructed on exactly the right principles and takes up
his abode therein. He is easily captured, for he refuses
to let go his vase when it is brought to the surface. In-
deed the only way to dislodge him is to pour hot water
through the hole in the bottom of his upturned tenement.

' For statistics of stamina, heights and weights of children, see Appendix
LXI.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE CARPENTER

(SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)

We are here to search the wounda of the realm, not to skim them
over. — ^Bacon

One day in the third week of October when the roads were
sprinkled with fallen leaves I made an excursion into the
Kwanto plain and passed from the prefecture of Tokyo into
that of Saitama.' The weather now made it necessary for
Japanese to wear double kimonos. During the middle of
the day, however, I was glad to walk with my jacket over
my arm, and many little boys and girls were running about
naked. The region visited had a naturally well-drained
dark soil, composed of river silt, of volcanic dust and of
humus from buried vegetation, and it went down to a depth
beyond the need of the longest daikon (giant radish).
Sweet potatoes and taro were still on the ground, and large
areas, worked to a perfect tilth, had been sown or were in
course of preparation for winter wheat and barley ; but
the most conspicuous crop was daikon. There were miles
and miles of it at all sorts of stages from newly trans-
planted rows to roots ready for pulling. There is daikon
production up to the value of about a million yen. In
addition to the roots sent into Tokyo, there is a large export
trade in daikon salted in casks.

I came into a district where there was a system of
alternate grain and wood crops. The rotation was barley
and wheat for three or four years, then fuel wood for about
fifteen. The tendency was to lengthen the corn period in
the rotation.

1 The Kwanto plain (73 by 96 miles) includes moat of Tokyo and
Saitama prefecture, and also the larger part of Kanagawa and Chiba and
parts of Ibaraki, Gumma and Toohigi.

309

310 HUSBANDMAN, WRESTLER AND CARPENTER

The women even as near Tokyo as this wore blue cotton
trousers like the men. One farm-house I entered was a cen-
tury old but it had not been more than forty years on its
present site. It had been transported three miles. I was
once more impressed by the low standard of living. If by
this time I had not been getting to know something of the
ways of the farmers I should have found it difficult to
credit the fact that a household I visited was worth ten
thousand yen.

Sweet potatoes are here much the most important crop.
They were bringing the farmer in Tokyo a little over a
yen the 82 lbs. bale. The consumer was paying double
that. Not a few of the farmers were cultivating as much
as 5 cho or even 8 did, for there was little paddy. Even
then, I was told, " it's a very hard life for a third of the
farmers." The reason was that there was no remunerative
winter employment.

Before the Buddhist temple, where there was preaching
twice a year, were rows of little stone figures, many of which
had lost their heads. The heads were in much demand
among gamblers who value them as mascots. Among
some mulberry plots belonging to different owners I saw a
little wooden shrine, evidently for the general good. It was
there, it was explained, " not because of belief but of
custom." The evening was drawing in and Fuji showed
itself blue and mystical above the dark greenery of the
country. As I gazed a ^weet-sounding gong was struck
thrice in the temple. Three times a day there is heard this
summons to other thoughts than those of the common task.

My companion entered into conversation with a decent
middle-aged pedestrian, neatly but poorly dressed, and
found that he was a man who had formerly pulled his
kuruma in Tokyo. The man had found the work of a
kurumaya too much for him and had withdrawn to his
village to open a tiny shop. But he had been taken ill and
had been removed to hospital. When he came out he found
that his wife was in poverty and that his eldest son had been
summoned to serve in the army. Now his wife had be-
come ill and he was on his way to a distant relative to ask
him to take charge of a small child and to help him with a

A WAYSIDE MONTrMENT. p. 39

THE GIANT EADISH OR i" DAIKON,"j WHICH IS USED AS A PIOKLE. p.

[311

SECRET PLOUGHING 311

little money to start some petty business. My companion
gave him a yen and deplored the fact that poor people
should fail to take advantage of the law releasing from
service a son required for the support of a parent. They
failed occasionally to find friends to represent their case
to the authorities.

While waiting at the station we talked with another old
man. He had come to see his daughter whose husband had
been called up for two years' service. She was living of
course with her parents-in-law. He said that his daughter
would have no difficulty in keeping the farm going during
the young man's absence, but his being away was " a
great loss."

The old man, who squatted at our feet as he spoke, went
on to tell us about a young man of his village who had served
his term in the navy but thought of remaining for another
term. " Gran'fer " thought it a good opening for him ; he
would not only get his living and clothes but — and this is
characteristic — " see the world and send back interesting
letters." The ancient was specially interested in the sailor,
he said, because his wife had " given milk " to the ad-
venturer when an infant.

It is difficult to enter a village which has not its pillar
or its slab to the memory of a youth or youths who
perished in the Russian or Chinese wars.' But in the
severe struggle with Russia the villages did more than
give their sons and build memorials to them when they
were killed. They tried, in the words of an official circular
of that time, " to preserve the spirit of independence
in the hearts of the relieved and to avoid the abuses
of giving out ready money." There was the secret
ploughing society of the young men of a village in Gumma
prefecture. " Either at night or when nobody knew these
young men went out and ploughed for those who were at
the front." In one prefecture the school children helped
in working soldiers' farms. In villages in Osaka and Hyogo
prefectures there was given to soldiers' families the mon-
opoly of selling tofu, matches and other articles. Some of

' The characters on these slabs are beautifully written. They have
usually been penned by distinguished men.
22

312 HUSBANDMAN, WRESTLER AND CARPENTER

the societies which laboured in war time were the Women's
One Heart Society, the Women's Chivabous Society, the
National Backing Society and the Nursing Place of Young
Children of those Serving at the Front.

In the train we talked of the hardiness induced by not
being the slave of clothing. When it rains kuruma men and
workmen habitually roll up their kimonos round their
loins, or if they are wearing trousers, take them off.' Of
course no Japanese believes in catching cold through
getting his feet wet. This is a condition which is continu-
ally experienced, for the cotton tabi are wet through at
every shower. Some years back it was not uncommon in
walking along the sea-beach at night to find fishermen sleep-
ing out on the sand. An old man told me that it used to be
the custom in his sea-shore hamlet for all members of a
family to sleep on the beach except fathers, mothers and
infants.

On my return from the country I found myself in a com-
pany of earnest rural reformers who were discussing a plan
of State colonisation for the inhabitants of some villages
where everything had been lost in a volcanic eruption.
Families had been given a tract of forest land, 15 yen for a
cottage, 45 yen for tools and implements and the cost of
food for ten months (reckoned at 8 sen per adult and 7 sen
per child per day). During the evening I was shown the
figure of a goddess of farming venerated by the afflicted
folk. The deity was represented standing on bales of rice,
with a bowl of rice in her left hand and a big serving spoon
in her right.

The gathering discussed the question of rural morality.
As to the relations of the young men and women of the
villages, to which there has necessarily been frequent
references in these pages, the reader must always bear in
mind the way in which the sexes are normally kept apart
under the influence of tradition. In nothing does this
Japanese countryside differ more noticeably from our own
than in the fact that joyous young couples are never seen

1 The Japanese man wears below his kimono or trousers a pair of bathing
shorts. Feasants frequently wear in the fields nothing but a little cotton
bag and string.

UNKISSED— AND KIND 318

arming each other along the road of an evening. Thous-
ands of allusions in our rural songs and poetry, innumerable
scenes in our genre pictures, speak of blissful hours of
which Japan gives no sign. There is no courting; there are in
the public view no ' ' random fits of daffin' .' ' An unmarried
young man and young woman do not walk and talk to-
gether. A young man and woman who were together of an
evening would be suspected of immorality. Even when
married they would not think of linking arms on the road.
I was a beholder of a family reunion at a railway station in
which a young wife met her young husband returned from
abroad. There were merely repeated bows and many
smiles. The view taken of kissing in Japan is shown by the
fact that an issue of a Tokyo periodical was prohibited by
the police because it contained an allusion to it. We are
helped to understand the Japanese standpoint a little if
we remember how repugnant to English and American
ideas is the Continental custom of men kissing one another.
Kissing is understood by the Japanese to be a sexual act, as
is shown by their word for it.

Early in November in the neighbourhood of Tokyo,
where three crops are taken in the year and sometimes four
or five, I found between the rows of growing winter barley
two Unes of green stuff which would be cleared oft as the
barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two dozen
or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart,
and liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100
bushels per acre has been produced by a good farmer.
The clump method of sowing is believed to afford greater
protection against the weather. (Outside the volcanic-
soil area ordinary sowing in rows is common.) The volcanic
soil, as one sees in spots where excavations have been made,
is originally light yellow. The humus introduced by the
liberal applications of manure has made it black.

I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with
trees and overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured
for the building of an elaborate series of temples at a cost
of three million yen. Acres of grounds were being laid out
with genius. The buildings were of that beautiful sim-
plicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The con-

314 HUSBANDMAN, WRESTLER AND CARPENTER

struction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master
craftsmen in Japan. The wotk was to be spread over four
years. A great hoarding displayed thousands of wooden
tablets bearing the names and the amounts of the sub-
scriptions of the faithful. In one of the completed temples
a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force of
his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively
listened to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I
caught the injunction that in the attainment of goodness
aspiration was little worth without will.

The method of announcing subscriptions on hoardings
was also adopted outside the new primary school near by.
The subscriptions were from a hundred yen to one yen.
The charge to scholars at this school, I found, was 10 sen
per month during the first compulsory six years and 30
sen during the next two years.

Just after Christmas I walked again into the country.
There were miles of dreary brown paddies with the stubble
in puddles. On the non-paddy land there was the refresh-
ing green of young corn which seemed greatly to enjoy
being treated as a garden plant in a deep exquisitely
worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children
were kept from school because their parents could not get
along without their help. Many of the school teachers
seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses
in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the
fire hole ' of every house, however, there was a generous
blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the
customary evening hot dip in the opening.

In my host's house I noticed an old painting of a forked
daikon. Such malformed roots used to be presented to
shrines by women desirous of having children.

In the office of one village I visited I was permitted to
examine the dossiers of some of the inhabitants. Among
a host of other particulars about a certain person's origin
and condition I read that he was a minor when his father
died, that such and such a person acted as his guardian,
that the guardianship ended on such and such a date, and

1 Poor households ordinarily use, instead of movable hibachi, a big
square box in an opening in the floor and resting on the earth.

"REST AFTER A MEAL EVEN—" 315

that his widowed mother had a child nine years after her
husband's death.

In not a few places I found that the tiny shrines of
hamlets (aza) had been taken away and grouped together
at a communal shrine with the notion of promoting local
solidarity. At one such combination of shrines I saw notice
boatds intimating that "tramps, pedlars, wandering priests
and other carriers of subscription lists and proselytisers "
were not received in the village. It was explained that a
community was sometimes all of one faith : " therefore it
does not want to be disturbed by tactless preachers of
other beliefs."

At an inn there was a middle-aged widow who served
there as waitress in the summer but in the winter returned
to Tokyo, where she employed a number of girls in making
haori tassels. (She gave them board and lodging and
clothes for two years, and, after that period, wages.')
Remembering what I had written down about courting, I
asked for her mature judgment on our rural custom of
" walking out." She was amused, but, in that way the
Japanese have of trying to look at a Western custom on
its merits, she said, after consideration, that there was
much to be said for the plan. " In Japan," she declared,
" you cannot know a husband's character until you are
married. On the whole, I wish I had been a man." In
order to catch our train we had to leave this inn the moment
our meal was finished, although the widow quoted to us the
adage, " Rest after a meal even if your parents are dead."

On a morning in May I went into the country to visit a
friend who was taking a holiday in a ramshackle inn
4,000 ft. up Mount Akagi. I continually heard the note of
the kakko (cuckoo). On the higher parts of the mountain
there were azaleas at every yard, some quite small but others
12 or even 15 ft. high. Many had been grazed by cattle.
Big cryptomeria were plentiful part of the way up, but at
the top there were no trees but diminutive oaks, birches

1 When I was in Tokyo, tradesmen's messenger boys received only their
food, lodging and clothing and an occasional present, with help no doubt
in starting a linked business when they were out of their time. Now such
youths, as a development of the labour movement, are on a wage basis
and receive 20 yen a month.

316 HUSBANDMAN, WRESTLER AND CARPENTER

and pines, stunted and lichen covered, the topmost branches
broken oft by the terrific blasts which from time to time
sweep along the top of the extinct volcano.

One of the products of rural Japan is the wrestler. Sumo,
which is going on in every school and college of the country,
exhibits its perfect flower twice a year in the January and
May ten-days-long tournaments in the capital. The
immense rotunda of the wrestlers' association suggests a
rather rickety Albert Hall and holds 13,000 people.' On
the day I went in I paid 2 yen and had only standing room.
Everybody knows the more than Herculean proportions of
the wrestlers in comparison with the rest of their country-
men. The rigorous training. Gargantuan feeding and
somewhat severe discipline of the wrestlers enable them to
grow beyond the average stature and to a girth, protected
by enormously developed abdominal muscles, which rein-
forces strength with great weight.'

I had often the opportunity at a railway station or in a
train to witness the easy carriage and magnificent pride of
these massive, good-tempered men. There is not in the
world, probably, a more remarkable illustration than they
afford of what superior physical training and superior feed-
ing can do. At first sight, indeed, these gigantic creatures
seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder that they
should be so commonly proteges of the rich and dis-
tinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year
in which I first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony
of cutting his hair — for, like Samson, the wrestler wears his
hair long — was performed by a personage who combined
the dignities of an admiral and a peer. There is nothing
of the bruiser in the looks of the smooth-faced wrestlers.
Many, however, are the bruises to their bodies and to their
self-esteem which they receive in their disciplinary progress
from the contests of their native villages through all the
grades of their profession to the highest rank. Their sexual
morality is commonly of the lowest.

In my own hamlet at home in England I have seen the

1 The place has since been burnt down. A bigger building has been
erected.

a See Appendix LXII.

THE SUPPLE TOES 317

shoemaker, tailor and carpenter successively pass away ;
the only craftsman left is the smith. In Japan the heredit-
ary craftsman survives for a while. I watched in my house
one day the labours of such a worker. He was not arrayed
in a Sunday suit fallen to the greasy bagginess of everyday
wear, topped by a soiled collar. He appeared in a blue
cotton jacket-length kimono and tight-fitting trousers of
the same stuff, and both garments, which were washed at
least once a week, were admirably fitted to their wearer's
work. Almost the same rig was worn by our own medieval
and pre-medieval workmen. The carpenter had on the
back of his coat the name of his master or guild in decorative
Chinese characters in white. There are nowadays in the
cities many inferior workers, but all the men who came to
my house worked with rapidity and concentration, hardly
ever lifting their eyes from their jobs. The dexterity of
the Japanese workman is seldom exaggerated. To his
dexterity he adds the considerable advantage of having
more than two hands, for he uses his feet together or singly.
His supple big toes are a great possession. We have lost
the use of ours, but the Japanese artisan, accustomed from
his youth to tabi with a special division for the big toe,
and to geta, which can be well managed only when the big
toe is lissom, uses his toes as naturally as a monkey, with
his paws and mouth full of nuts, gives a few to his feet to
hold. The first sight of a foot holding a tool is uncanny.

The pitiful thing is that a modest, polite, cheerful, in-
dustrious, skilful, and in the best sense of the word artistic
hereditary craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey
to the new industrial system. It is a sad reflection that
the country which, owing to her long period of seclusion,
had the opportunity of applying to all the things of common
life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so little
conscious of the pace at which her industrial rake's pro-
gress is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she
is prodigally sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her,
can never be recovered. It is no doubt true that when
our own handicrafts were dying we also were insensitive.
But because the Middle Ages in England encountered the
industrial system gradually we suffered our loss more slowly

318 HUSBANDMAN, WRESTLER AND CARPENTER

than Japan is doing. Because, too, we never had in our
bustling history the long periods of immunity from home
and foreign strife by which Japanese craftsmanship profited
so wonderfully, we may not have had such large stores of
precious skill and taste to squander as New Japan, the
spendthrift of Old Japan's riches, is unthinkingly casting
away.

It is at Christmas at home that we have in the Christmas
tree our reminder of the country. It is on New Year's Day
that in Japan a pine tree is set up on either side of the front
gate, but there are three bamboos with it, and the four
trunks are all beautifully bound together with rope. If the
ground be too hard for the trees to be stuck in the ground,
they are kept upright by having a dozen heavy pieces of
wood, not unlike fire logs, neatly bound round them.
The pines may be about 10 ft. high, the bamboo about 15
ft. To the trees are affixed the white paper gohei. Over
the doorway itself is an arrangement of straw, an orange, a
lobster, dried cuttlefish and more gohei. A less expensive
display consists of a sprig of pine and bamboo. Poor
people have to be content with a yard-high pine branch
with a French nail through it at either side of their doorway.
I have been ruralist enough to harbour thoughts of the
extent to which the woods are raided for all this New Year
forestry. Some prefectures, in the sincerity of their de-
votion to afforestation, forbid the New Year destruction
of pine trees.

I remember the gay and elaborate dressing of the horses
during the New Year holidays. I saw one driver of a wagon
who was not content with tying streamers on every part
of his horse where streamers could be tied : he had also
decorated himself, even to the extent of having had his
head cropped to a special pattern, tracts of hair and bare
scalp alternating.

It was pleasant to learn that a fine chrysanthemum show
arranged in an open space in Tokyo was free to the public.
Some plants, by means of grafting, bore flowers of half a
dozen different varieties. Several plants had been won-
drously trained into the form of kuruma, etc. Not a few of
the varieties exhibited were, according to our ideas, atrocious

" LONELYISM " 319

in colouring, but many were beautiful and all were marvels
of cultivation. Even greater manipulative and horti-
cultural skill was represented in the chrysanthemums I
saw at the Imperial garden party. A chief of a depart-
ment of the Ministry of Agriculture told me that from a
chrysanthemum growing in the ground it was possible to
have a thousand blooms.

In a Japanese room the timber upright alongside the
tokonoma is always a tree trunk in the rough. If it be cherry
it has its bark on. The contrast with the finely finished
wood of the rest of the room is arresting. It is said that
the use of the unplaned upright is not more than three or
four hundred years old and that it had its origin in Cha-no-
yu affectations of simplicity.

I was visited one evening by an agricultural official who
had returned from a visit to Great Britain. He spoke of
the " lonelyism " of our best hotels. In a Japanese hotel
of the same class one's room is so simple and the view of the
garden is so refreshing that, with the beautiful flower
arrangement indoors, the frequent change of kakemono, the
serving of one's meals in a different set of lacquer and
porcelain each day and the willing and smiling service
always within the call of- a hand clap, there comes a sense of
restfulness and peace. The drawback which the Western
man experiences is the lack of any means of resting his
back but by lying down and the inability to read for long
while resting an elbow on an arm rest which is too low for
him.' A Japanese often reads kneeling before a table.

Here I am reminded to say that the development of the
desire for books and newspapers in the rural districts is a
noticeable thing, if only because it is new. It is not so long
ago that reading was considered to be an occupation for old
men and women and for children. The samurai had few
books and the farmers fewer still. But the idea of combining
cultivation and culture was not unknown. I have heard a
rural student humbly quote the old saying, Sd-ko U-doku

1 There is also the occasional whiff of the benjo ; but, as an agricultural
expert said, " It is not a bad thing that a people which is increasingly under
the influence of industrialism should be compelled to give a thought to
agriculture." There are European countries famous for their farming
whose sanitary experts are evidently similarly minded.

320 HUSBANDMAN, WRESTLER AND CARPENTER

(literally, " Fine weather — farming — Rainy weather —
reading").

I have a rural note of one of my visits to the Nd.'^ One
farce brought on an inferior priest of a sect which is now
extinct but surely deserves to be remembered for its en-
couragement of mountain climbing. This " mountain
climber," as he was called, was hungry and climbed a
farmer's tree in order to steal persimmons. (The actor got
on a stool, obligingly steadied by a supposedly invisible
attendant, and pretended to clamber up a corner post of the
stage.) While he was eating the persimmons he was dis-
covered by their owner. The farmer was a man of humour
and said that he thought that " that must be a crow in the
tree." So the poor priest tried to caw. " No," said the
farmer, " it is surely a monkey." So the priest began to
scratch after the manner of monkeys. " But perhaps,"
the farmer went on, " it is really a kite." The priest
flapped his arms — and fell. The farmer thought that he
had the priest at his mercy. But the priest, rubbing his
beads together, put a spell on him and escaped. The
word No is written with an ideograph which means ability,
but No also stands for agriculture.'

1 The fact that Dr. Waley'e scholarly book is the third work on the No
to be published in England in recent years is evidence that a knowledge of a
form of lyrical drama of rare artistry is gradually extending in the West.

' Hence the names of the two national agricultural organisations,
Teikoku Nokai, that is the Imperial Agricultural Society, and Dai Nippon
Nokai, that is the Great Japan Agrioultiiral Society.

CHAPTER XXXVI

" THKY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN "
(gumma, KAN AG a WA AND CHIBA)

I find the consolation of life in things with which Governments cannot
interfere, in the light and beauty the earth puts forth for her children. If
the universe has any meaning, it exists for the purposes of soul. — M

One December night there walked into my house a pro-
fessor of agricultural politics, clad in tweeds and an over-
coat, and with him a man who wore only a cotton kimono
and a single under-garment. The sunburnt forehead of
this man showed that he was not in the habit of wearing
a hat. There is a smiling Japanese face which to many
foreigners is merely irritating. It is not less irritating
when, as often happens, it displays bad teeth ostenta-
tiously gold-stopped. This man's smile was sincere and
he had beautiful teeth. His hands were nervous and thin,
his bearing was natural and his voice gentle. Here,
evidently, was an altruist, perhaps a zealot, probably a
celibate. He was introduced as a rural religionist from
Gumma prefecture set on reforming his countrymen. It
is important to know the strength of the reforming power
which Japan is itself generating : here was a man who
for eight years had lived a life of poverty in remote regions
and had shaped his life by three heroes, " St. Francis,
Tolstoy and Kropotkin." He believed that the way to
influence people was " to work with them." He lived on
his dole as a junior teacher in an elementary school. His
food, which he cooked himself, was chiefly rice and miso.
He had been a vegetarian for ten years. He was twenty-
nine.

He said that as far as the people of his village — largely
peasant proprietors who hired additional land — were con-

321

322 "THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"

cerned, " It is happy for them if they end the year without
debt." I asked how the men in the village who owned land
but did not work it spent their time. The reply was :
" They are chattering of many things, very trivial things,
and they disturb the village. They drink too much and
they have concubines or women elsewhere."

" If an ordinary peasant went to the next town to see
women there," the speaker continued, " young men of the
village would go and give him a good knock. In former
times ' waitresses ' were highly spoken of in the village, but
not now. There are some young men who may go at night
to a house where there are young girls in the family and
open the door. Sometimes they bring cucumbers. Cu-
cumbers are symbols. Some do this out of fun and some
sincerely to express their feelings. If the young men who
do such a thing do it out of fun they are given a good
knock by members of that house when discovered. If
they are sincere the members of the family will smile.
There are in our village of 6,000 inhabitants only four
illegitimate children."

As to the influences exerted for the betterment of the
people the follower of St. Francis was convinced that
" when Buddhist influence, Shintoism, Confucianism and
the good customs of our race are all mixed together so that
you cannot discern one from the other we have some living
power." His own religion was " that of St. Francis com-
bined with Buddhism."

Speaking generally of rural people my visitor said :
" They are falling into miserable conditions, are in effect
spending what was accumulated by their ancestors. Their
houses are not so practical and cost more. They think they
live better but their physical condition is not better. The
number who cannot earn much is increasing." I was told
of a growing habit among village boys of running off to
Tokyo without their parents' permission. And bands of
girls came to the district to help in the silk-worm season
" often without their parents' approval."

Many villagers consulted my visitor on all sorts of
subjects until he had almost no leisure. Some wanted
counsel about the future of their children, some desired

"THE FUNDAMENTAL POWER" 323

advice about the family debt, some wanted to know how
to put an end to quarrels and some asked " how a man
will be able to be easy-minded." The ordinary result of
the primary school system was " a mass of many informa-
tions in young brains and they cannot tell wisdom from
knowledge. The result is that they are discontented with
their hard lot. They grow up wishing to rob each other
within the bounds of the law. They want to live com-
fortably without hard work. Good customs which were
the crystallisation of the experience of our race are dying
away."

My visitor had met an old woman on the road clad
miserably. She earned as a labourer on a farm, beside her
board and lodging, 25 sen daily. Of this sum she handed
to a fellow-villager whom she trusted 20 sen. He gave
away many clothes to the poor and her contribution was
used with the money he expended. " If," said she, " one
shall give to God a small thing in darkness then it is
accepted to its full value, but, if it be known, it is accepted
only at a small value." She was " content and quite
happy."

This woman and many others in the district had a primi-
tive kind of religion. They observed the days called
" waiting for the sun " and " waiting for the moon."
" The same-minded people gather. The one most deeply
experienced tells something to those assembled and they
begin to be imbued with the same spirit. It is some kind
of transformed worship of the sun god. They feel the
mercy of the sun. They do not worship the heavenly
bodies but as the symbol of the merciful universe. These
people take meals together several times in a year. They
talk not only on spiritual but on common things and about
the news in the papers. It may seem to a stranger that
what they talk is foolish, but they have a wonderful power
to attract the essential out of those trifles."

" The fundamental power which made Japan what it is,"
the speaker went on with animation, " is not institutions
and statesmen, but those primitive religious acts. The
people strongly resembling the old woman I spoke of may
be only 1 per cent., but almost all villagers are imbued

324 "THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"

with such religious notions and feel thankfulness, and on
rare occasions a latent sentiment springs from their hearts.
Their religion may be connected with Buddhism or
Shintoism ; it is not Buddhism or Shintoism, however,
but a primitive belief which in its manifestation varies
much in different villages. For example, in one village the
good deeds of an ancient sage are told. The time when
that priest lived and particulars about him are getting
dimmer and dimmer, but his influence is still considerable.
Though many people are worshipped in national and pre-
fectural shrines the influence of those enshrined is small
compared with the influence of a man or woman of the
past who was not much celebrated but was thought to be
good by the rustic people.

" Think of the way in which the memory of the maid-
servant Otake is worshipped by the peasants through one-
half of Japan. That was a pious and illuminated person
who worked very hard. As her uta (poem) says, ' Though
hands and feet are very busy at work, still I can praise and
follow God always because my mind and heart are not
occupied by worldly things.' She ate poor food and gave
her own food to beggars. So when a countryman wastes
the bounty of nature he is still reprimanded by the ex-
ample of that maid-servant. She is more respected than
many great men."

My visitor thought a religious revival might happen
under the leadership of a Christian or of a Buddhist, or of a
man who " united Buddhism and Christianity " or " de-
veloped the primitive form of faith among the lower
people." He thought there were " already men in the
country who might be these leaders." He said that much
might happen in ten years. " Materialism is prevalent
everywhere, but people will begin to feel difficulties in
following their materialism. When they cannot go any
further with it they will begin to be awakened."

And then this young man who sincerely desires to do
something with his life and has at any rate made a beginning
went his way. Up and down Japan I met several single-
hearted men not unlike him.

One day I made an excursion from Tokyo and came on an

THE FOXES AND THE TEAHOUSES 825

extraordinary avenue of small wooden red painted torii,
gimcracky things made out of what a carpenter would call
" two by two stuff." By the time I got to the shrine to
which the torii led I must have passed a thousand of these
erections. In one spot there was a stack of torii lying on
their sides. The shrine was in honour of the fox god and
there was a curious story behind it. Twenty years before
a man interested in the " development " of the district
had caused it to be given out that foxes, the messengers of
the god Inari, had been seen on this spot in the vicinity
of a humble shrine to that divinity. The farmers were
continually questioned about the matter. It was suggested
that the god was manifesting his presence. In the end
more and more worshippers came, and, with the liberal
assistance of the speculator, a fine new shrine was erected
in place of the shabby one. His hand was also seen in the
building of a big burrow — of concrete — for the comfort of
the god's messenger. The top of the burrow also fur-
nished an excellent view of the surrounding district, and
teahouses were built in the vicinity. Indeed in a year or
two quite a village of teahouses came into existence. The
place, which was on the sea-coast, had become a kind of
Southend or Coney Island, and attracted thousands of
visitors.

A large proportion of these teahouses would have great
difficulty in establishing a claim to respectability. Numbers
of lamps which crowded the space before the shrine were
the gifts of women of bad character and the inscriptions on
these gifts bore the addresses and profession of the donors.
The final irony was the provision of a tram service for the
convenience of those who wished to worship at another
altar than that of the fox god. Although most of the
visitors found the chief attraction of the place in the tea-
houses,^ they were none the less devout. Every visitor
to the teahouses worshipped at the shrine.

What do those who bow their heads and throw their
coppers in the treasury pray for ? " Well-being to my

• Someone said to me, " I have in mind one village where there is a
poorly cared-for school and a score of teahouses giving employment to
nearly two hundred people,"

326 "THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"

fan:iily and prosperity to my business " was, I was told, a
common form of invocation. Even among not a few
reasonably well educated people there is a conviction that
prayers made at the altar of the fox god are peculiarly
efficacious. Kanzo Uchimura, who accompanied me on
this trip, improved the occasion by saying in his vigorous
English : " You in the West have some difficulty, no doubt,
in understanding the fierceness of the indignation with
which Old Testament prophets denounce heathen gods.
When you behold such an exhibition as this you may be
helped to understand. Here is impurity under divine pro-
tection, and this place may fairly be called a fashionable
shrine. The visitor to Japan often vaunts himself on being
broadminded. He regards heathendom as only another sect
and he desires to be respectful to it. But I want to show
you that it is not a case of only another sect but often a
case of gross and demoralising superstition and priestly
countenancing of immorality. Heaven forbid that I
should deny the beauty of the idea of the foxes being the
messengers of divinity or that I should suggest that some
religious feelings may not inspire and some religious feel-
ing may not reward the sincere devotion of the countryman
to his fox god, but how much does it amount to in sum ? "

I thought of what Uchimura had said when one day, in
the course of a walk with his critic, Yanagi (Chapter XI),
I was shown a shrine pitifully bedizened by the waraji
(straw sandals) and ema ' of a thousand or more pilgrims
who were suffering or had recovered from syphilis.'

During our conversation Yanagi said : " Shintoism is
not of course a religion at all. It draws great strength
from the national instinct for cleanliness manifested by

^ " Small boards with crude designs painted on them. They may be
prayers, thank-offerings or protective charms. A shrine -where many
thanks ema have been left is clearly that of a god ready to hear and answer
prayer. Worshippers flock to the place and the accumulation of painted
boards — ^whether prayers or thanks — increases." — Fredbbick Stabb,
Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xlviii.

2 The percentage in conscripts in 1918 was 2-2 per cent, against 2'6 per
cent, in 1917 and 2-7 per cent, in 1916. ("Not less than 10 per cent,
of the population of our large towns are infected with syphilis and a much
larger proportion with gonorrhoea." — Sib James /Cbichton-Bbowne.)
The figures for the general population of Japan must be higher.

BUDDHISM WITHOUT BUDDHA 327

people living in a hot climate. The religion of poor people
is largely custom ; I complain of educated people not that
they are sceptical but that they are not sceptical enough.
They simply don't care. According to Mr. Uchimura,
there is only one way to God and that is through Chris-
tianity. But there are many ways. A personal religion
like Christianity is more effective than Buddhism, but it
does not follow that Christianity is better than Buddhism.
I find I get to like Mr. Uchimura more and more and his
views less and less. It is not his theoretical Christianity
but his courageous spirit which attracts. He is a courage-
ous man and we have very great need of morally courageous
men. Although Christianity is impossible without Christ,
Buddhism is possible without Buddha. A variety of re-
ligions is not harmful, and we have to take note of the
Christian temperament and the Buddhistic temperament.
Orientals can only be appealed to by an Oriental religion.
Christianity is an Oriental religion no doubt, but it has
been Westernised. It must always be borne in mind that
Buddhistic literature is in a special language and that it is
difficult for most people to get a general view of Buddhism."

In further talk the speaker said that in Japan the
individual had not been separated from the mass. But it
was difficult to exaggerate the swiftness of the national
development. The newer Russian writers were " certainly
as well known in England, possibly better known." As to
Tolstoy alone, there were iat least fifty books about him.
But it had to be admitted that, generally speaking, the
Japanese development though rapid had not gone deep.
In painting there was dexterity and technique but few
men knew where they were going. Their work was
" surface beautiful." They had not passed the stage
of Zorn.

We spoke of conscription and I said that it had not
escaped my attention that many young men showed an
increasing desire to avoid military service. From a single
person I had heard of youths who had escaped by looking
iU— through a week's fasting— by impairing their eyesight
by wearing strong glasses for a few weeks, by contriving to
be examined in a fishing village where the standard of
28

328 " THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN "

physique was high, or by shamming Sociahst.' Many
Japanese bear uncomplainingly the heavy burden of the
military system. But the others are to be reckoned with.

Said one of these to me : " We Japanese are not in-
herently a warlike people and have no desire to be militar-
ists ; but we are suffering from German influence not only
in the army but through the middle-aged legal, scientific
and administrative classes who were largely educated in
Germany or influenced by German teaching. This German
influence may have been held in check to some extent,
perhaps, by the artistic world, which has certainly not been
German, except in relation to music, and after all that is the
best part of Germany. Many young people have taken their
ideas largely from Russia ; more from the United States
and Great Britain. But Germany will always make her
appeal on account of her reputation with us for system,
order, industry, depth of knowledge, persistence and
nationalism."

On the family system, the study of which was more than
once urged upon me in connection with the rural problem,
this statement was made to me by an agricultural expert :
" I will tell you the story of an official whose salary was that
of a Governor. His father was a farmer. The farmer
borrowed money to educate his son. When the son be-
came an official he paid the money back, but on the small
salaries he received this repayment was a strain. Then two
brothers came to his house frequently for money, and when
they received it spent it in ridiculous ways. This begging
has gone on for nine years. My friend has to live not like
an Excellency but like a guncho. He cannot treat his
wife and children fairly. But of the money he gives to his
brothers he say^, ' It is my family expense.' "

I also heard this story : "A married B. B died without
having any children. A next married B's sister, C. Then,
because of the necessity of having a male heir for the
maintenance of his family, and because he thought it was
unlikely that his wife C would have children as her dead
sister B had had none, he adopted his wife's younger brother,

' See Appendix LXIII.

THE TRYING FAMILY SYSTEM 329

D. But the wife C did have children. Consequently, not
only is A's wife his sister-in-law and his eldest ' son ' his
wife's brother, but his children are his eldest ' son's '
nephews. The eldest of these children, E, is legally the
younger son. He says, ' I am glad that instead of an
uncle I have an elder brother. I am much attached to him
and he is attached to me, I am not sorry to be younger
instead of elder brother, for when my father dies my
adopted brother will become head of the family and he
must then bring up his younger brothers and sisters, manage
the family fortunes, bear the family troubles and keep all
the cousins and uncles in good humour by inviting them
occasionally and at other times by visiting them and giving
them presents.' '

"It is obvious that our family system, for speaking in
criticism of which officials have been dismissed from their
posts, puts too much stress on the family and too little on
the individual. The family is the unit of society. Any
member of it is only a fraction of that unit. For the sake
of the family every member of it must sacrifice almost
ever3^hing.' Sometimes the development of the individual
character and individual initiative is checked by the family
system. An eldest son is often required to follow his
father's calling irrespective of his tastes. Nowadays some
eldest sons go abroad, but their departure attracts attention
and you seldom find such a thing happening among farmers.
The family system, by which all is subordinated to family,
is convenient to farmers for it means increased labour and
economy of living. Sometimes there may be two married
sons living at home and then there is often strife. Generally
speaking, the family system at one and the same time keeps
young men from striking out in the world and compels their
early marriage so that the helping hands to the family may
be more numerous. The family system concentrates the
attention on the family and not on society. There is no
energy left for society.

1 It sometimes happens that an adopted son is dismissed with " a
sufficient monetary compensation " when a real son is bom.

2 I met a fine ex-daimyo, who after the Bestoration had served as a
prefeotural governor. He was so generous in giving money to public
obieota in his prefecture that his family compelled him to resign office.

830 " THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN "

" Again, the family system gives too much power to
relatives and leads to disagreeable interference. In the
case of a marriage being proposed between family A and
family B, the families related to A or B who will be brought
into closer connection by the marriage may object. On the
other hand, the family system has the advantage that the
relatives who interfere may also be looked upon for help.
Not a few people are all for maintaining the family system.
But the spirit of individualism is entering into some families
and here and there children are beginning to claim their
rights and to act against relatives' wishes. One hears of
farmers sending boys, even elder sons, to the towns, and for
their equipment borrowing from the prefectural agricul-
tural bank instead of spending on the development of their
business."

At a Christmas-day luncheon I met four students of rural
problems, two of whom were peers, one a governor of an
important prefecture, and a fourth a high official in the
agricultural world. One man, speaking of the family
system, said " the success of agriculture depends on it."
" In my opinion," someone remarked, " the foundation of
the family system is common production and common
consumption, so when these things go there must be a
gradual disappearance of the family system." " No,"
came the rejoinder, " the only enemy of the family system
is Western influence." " Yes," the fourth speaker added,
" an enemy whose blows have told."

Someone suggested that the Japanese rural emigrant
always hoped to return home, that is if he could return with
dignity — does not the proverb speak of the desirability of
returning home in good clothes ? One of the company said
that he had seen in Kyushu rows of white-washed slated
houses which had been erected by returned emigrants.
" But they were successful prostitutes. Often, however,
these girls invest their money unwisely and have to go
abroad again."

Everybody at table agreed that there was in the villages
a slow if steady slackening of " the power of the landlord,
of the authorities and of religion," and a development of
a desire and a demand for better conditions of life. One

TO WESTERNISE FARTHER? 381

who proclaimed himself a conservative urged that changes
of form were too readily confounded with changes of spirit.
The change in thought in Japan, he said, was slow, and some
occurrences might be easily misjudged. I said that that
very day I had heard from my house the drone of an aero-
plane prevail over the sound of a temple bell. Happening
to speak of The Golden Bough, I asked my neighbour, who
had read it, if to a Japanese who got its penetrating view
some things could ever be the same again. He answered
frankly, " There are things in our life which are too near to
criticise. Do you know that there are parts of Japan where
folklore is still being made ? "

I was invited one evening to dinner to meet a dozen men
conspicuous in the agricultural world. Priests were apolo-
gised for because most of them were " very poor men and
also poorly educated." Very few had been even to a
middle school. Many priests read Chinese scriptures
aloud but they did not understand what they were reading.

One man reported that an old farmer had said to him
that paddy-field labour was harder than dry-land labour,
but young men did not go off to Tokyo because of the
severity of the work ; they went away because of " the
bondage of rural life."

How much has the economic stress affected old convic-
tions ? How general and how eager is the Japanese resolu-
tion to Westernise farther ? None of the rural sociolo-
gists had given any thought apparently to a new factor in
the rural problem : the way in which compulsory military
service, in taking farmers' sons to the cities as soldiers and
bluejackets, is giving them an acquaintance with neo-
Malthusianism. In Tokyo and other large cities certain
articles are prominently advertised on the hoardings. It
is of some importance to consider what will be the effect of
this knowledge in competition with the national apprecia-
tion of large famihes.^ Is it likely that an intensely
" practical " people, which has bolted so much of European
and American " civilisation," will be wholly uninfluenced
by the Western practice of limitation of offspring ? What

» See Appendix XXX.

382 " THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN "

is to-day the actual strength of the social needs which have
produced the large Japanese fanaily ? ' Whatever middle-
aged Japanese may think, the matter is not in their hands,
but in the hands of the younger generation. Most Western
economists would no doubt argue that if fewer babies arrived
in Japan there would not be so many farmers' boys and.
university graduates bent on emigrating.

Without the voluntary limitation of families, however,
the number of children born is likely to be diminished
by the increased cost of living and by the postponement
of marriage. I know Japanese men who were married
before they were twenty ; the younger generation of my
friends is marrying nearer thirty.'

There is reason to believe that the population has not
increased of recent years at the old rate.' A responsible
authority expressed the opinion to me that the necessities
of the population are unlikely to overtake the means of
production in the near future,*

The Japanese are intensely practical, but they have, as
we have seen, another side. If that other side is not

1 It is only within the last quarter of a century that the authorities
have taken a stand against infanticide. There is no traditional dislike of
an artificial diminution of progeny, for many of the fathers and grandfathers
of the present generation practised it. Methods of procuring aborti(Si
were also common. A certain plant has a well-known reputation as an
abortif acient. A young peer and his wife are now conducting a campaign
on behalf of smaller families, and the discussion has advanced far enough
for a magazine to invite Dr. Havelock Ellis to express his views.

2 According to the 1918 figures the ages at which men and women
married were as follows per 1,000 : before 20, m. 37-6, w. 259-0 ; 20-25,
m. 304-9, w. 434-8 ; 26-30, m. 347-9, w. 159-4 ; 31-35, m. 145-1, w. 67-3 ;
36-40, m. 70-0, w. 37-1 ; 41-45, m. 41-8, w. 21-4; 46-50, m. 22-8, w.
10-5; 61-55, m. 14-7, w. 6-0; 66-60, m. 7-3, w. 2-6; 61 and upwards,
m. 7-9, w. 2.

3 See Appendix XXX.

• See Appendices XXV and LXXX ; also page 363 for the reasons operat-
ing against emigration. Mr. J. Russell Kennedy, of Kokusai-Reuter,
declared (1921) that it was " a myth that Japan must find an outlet for
surplus population ; Japan has plenty of room within her own border,"
that is, including Korea and Formosa as well as Hokkaido in Japan. Mr.
S. Yoshida, Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in London, in an address
also delivered in 1921, stressed the value of the fishing-grounds and the
mercantile marine as openings for an increased population. " The
resources of the sea," he said, " give Japan more room for her population
than appears."

THE ABBOT AND THE RONIN 883

" spiritual," in the sense in which the word is largely used
in the West, it is at least regardful of other considerations
than the ' ' practical.' ' It is with thoughts of that vital side
of the national character that I recall a story told me by
Dr. Nitobe of the last days of the Forty-seven Ronin. It
is well authenticated. When the Ronin had slain their
dead lord's persecutor and had given themselves up to the
authorities, they were found worthy of death. But the
Shogun was in some anxiety as to what might justly be
done. He sent privily to a famous abbot saying that it
was at all times the duty of the Shogun to condemn to death
men who had committed murder. Yet it was the privilege
of a priest to ask for mercy, and in the matter of the lives
of the Ronin the Shogun would not be unwilling to listen
to a plea for mercy. The abbot answered that he sympa-
thised deeply with the Ronin, but because he so sympathised
with them he was unwilling to take any steps which might
hinder the carrying out of the sentence. It was true, he
said, that there were old men among the Ronin, but many,
of them were young men — one was only fifteen^ — and it
had to be borne in mind that if they escaped death at the
hands of the law it was hardly likely that during the whole
course of their after-lives they could hope to escape com-
mitting sin of some sort or another. At the moment they
had reached a pinnacle of nobility which they could never
pass and it was a thing to be desired for them that they
should die now, when they would live to all posterity as
heroes. The happiest fate for the Ronin was a righteous
death, and as their admiring sympathiser the abbot ex-
pressed his unwillingness to do anything which might have
the effect of saving them from so glorious an end.

REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO
CHAPTER XXXVII

COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS
Above all, this is not concerned with poetry. — ^Wii.feed Owen

When the traveller stands at the northern end of the
mainland ^ of Japan he is five hundred miles from Tokyo.
In the north of Hokkaido he is a thousand miles away.
Hokkaido, the most northerly and the second biggest of
the four islands into which Japan is divided, is cui;iously
American. The wide straight streets of the capital,
Sapporo,' laid out at right angles, the rough buggies with
the farmer and his wife riding together, the wooden houses
with stove stacks, and, instead of paper-covered shoji,
window panes : these things are seen nowhere else in Japan
and came straight from America. It was certainly from
America that the farmers had their cries of " Whoa." One
of the best authorities on Hokkaido has declared that the
administrative and agricultural instructors whom America
sent there from about the time of the Franco-Prussian war
" gave Japan a fairer, kindlier conception of America than
all her study of American history."

In Old Japan there is always something which speaks of
the centuries that are gone ; in Sapporo there is nothing
that matters which is fifty years old. One of the most

1 The word used by people in Hokkaido for the main island, Hondo or
Honshu {Hon, main ; do or shu, land), is Naicki (interior).

2 Fronx Aoniori on the mainland to Hakodate in Hokkaido is a 50-miles
sea trip. Then comes a long night journey to Sapporo, during which one
passes between two active volcanoes. The sea trip is 60 miles because a
large part of the route taken by the steamer is through Aomori Bay. The
nearest part of Hokkaido to the mainland is a little less than the
distance between Dover and Calais.

334

THE FOREIGN HELPERS 885

remarkable facts in the agricultural history of Japan is that
a country with a teeming population and an intensive
farming should have left entirely undeveloped to so late a
period as the early seventies a great island of 35,000 square
miles which lies within sight of its shores. The wonder is
that an attempt on Yezo ' was not made by the Russians,
who, but for the vigorous action of a British naval com-
mander, would undoubtedly have taken possession of the
island of Tsushima, 700 miles farther south and midway
between Japan and Korea. Up to the time of the fall of the
Shogun the revenue of the lords of Yezo was got by taxing
the harvest of the sea and the precarious gains of hunters.
The Imperial Rescript carried by the army which was sent
against certain adherents of the Shogun who had fled there
said : " We intend to take steps to reclaim and people the
island." ' It is doubtful if at that period the population
was more than 60,000 ' (including Ainu).*

When Count Kuroda was put at the head of the Colonial
Government he went over to America and secured as his
adviser-in-chief the chief of the Agricultural Department
at Washington. Stock, seeds, fruit trees, implements and
machinery, railway engines, buildings, practically every-
thing was American in the early days of Hokkaido. During
a ten-year period, in which forty-five American instructors
were sent for, five Russians, four Britons, four Germans,
three Dutchmen and a Frenchman were also imported.'

Governor Kuroda had a million yen placed at his disposal
for ten years in succession, and a million yen was a big sum
in those days. Before long there were flour mills, brew-

' Foreigners sometimes confound Yezo (Hokkaido) with Yedo, the old
name for Tokyo.

' A sixth of Hokkaido still belongs to the Imperial Household. In 1918
it decided to sell forest and other land (parts of Japan not stated) to the
value of 100 million yen. In 1917 the Imperial estates were estimated at
18J million cho of forest and 22J million cho of " plains," that is tracts
which are not timbered nor cultivated nor built on.

' In 1919 it was 2,137,700.

* Considerations of space compel the holding over of a chapter on the
Ainu for another volume.

" Of the 96 foreign instructors in institutions "under the direct control "
of the Tokyo Department of Education in 1917-18, there were 27 British,
22 German, 19 American and 12 French.

886 COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

eries, beet-sugar factories, canning plants, lead and coal
mining and silk manufacturing and an experiment in soldier
colonisation which owed something to Russian experiments
in Cossack farming. An agricultural school grew into a
large agricultural college ; and this agricultural college has
lately become the University of Hokkaido, with nearly a
thousand students.' How much of a pioneer Sapporo
College was may be gathered from the fact that when I was
in Hokkaido 67 out of the 140 men who were members of
the faculty had been themselves taught there. Dean Sato
(Japan's first exchange lecturer to American universities),
Dr. Nitobe (Japanese Secretary of the League of Nations)
and Kanzo Uchimura were among the first students.
There have always been American professors at Sapporo —
its first president came from Massachusetts — and the
professorship of English has always been held by an
American.

The 50 acres of elm-studded land in which the University
buildings stand are a surprise, for the elm grows nowhere
else in Japan but Hokkaido.' The extent of the Univer-
sity's landed possessions is also unexpected. There are
two training farms of 185 and 260 acres respectively,
beautifully kept botanic gardens, a tract of 15,000 acres
on which there are already more than a thousand tenants,
and 300,000 acres of forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien and
Korea. Four or five times as many students as can be
admitted offer themselves at Sapporo.

There is in Hokkaido an agricultural and rural life con-
ceived for a country where stock may be kept and a farmer
does not need to practise the superintensive farming of Old
Japan. At the first University farm I looked over it was
clear that not only American but Swedish, German and
Swiss farming practice had had its influence. No longer
was the farmer content with mattocks, hoes and flails. A
silo dominated the scene, and maize, eaten from the cob in

1 Hokkaido is one of five Imperial universities. There are in addition
several well-known private universities.

2 Grouse are also to be found in Hokkaido, but no pheasants and no
monkeys. The deep Tsugaru Strait marks an ancient geological division
between Hokkaido and the mainland.

THE JAPANESE MANITOBA 387

Old Japan, was a crop for stock.' I also noticed crops of
oats and rye.

I arrived in Hokkaido in the last week of August in a linen
suit and was glad to put on a woollen one. By September
29 it was snowing. Snow-shoes were shown among the
products of the island at the prefectural exhibition.
Canadians have likened the climate of Hokkaido to
that of Manitoba. Hokkaido is on the line of the Great
Lakes, but the cold current from the North makes com-
parisons of this sort ineffective. It is only in southern
Hokkaido that apples will grow. Thirty years ago wolves
and bear were shot two miles from Sapporo and bear may
still be found within ten miles.

The sea fisheries of Hokkaido are valuable but agriculture
and forestry are greater money makers. Even without
forestry agriculture is well ahead of factory industry, which
is also eclipsed by mining. Industry is aided by the presence
of coal. Among manufactures, brewing stands out even
more conspicuously than wood-pulp making or canning.
One of the three best-known beers in Japan comes from
Hokkaido.' In contrast with the situation in Old Japan,
where the land is half paddy and half upland, there is in
Hokkaido only a ninth of the cultivated land under rice.'
When I was in Hokkaido there were 600,000 cho under
cultivation, a hundred and fifty times more than there were
in 1873. The line marking the northern or rather the north-
eastern limit of rice shows roughly a third of the island
on the northern and eastern coasts to be at present beyond
the skill of rice growers. There is always uncertainty with
the rice crop in Hokkaido. As the growing period is short,
half the rice is not transplanted but sown direct in the
paddies. A bad crop is expected once in seven years. In
such a season there is no yield and even the straw is not
good.

Immigrants get 5 cho, but if they are without capital they
first go to work as tenants. There are contractors in the

1 It is sometimes eaten, ground to a rough meal, with rice. The
argument is that maize is two thirds the price of rice and more easily
digested.

2 See Appendix XXXVII.

' The latest figures for Hokkaido show only a tenth.

888 COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

towns who supply labourers to farmers and factories at
busy times. When newcomers have capital and are keen
on rice growing and are families working without hired
labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote
more than 2J cho to rice — from 3 to 5 cho are the absolute
limit — against 1 J or 2 cho to other crops. When the holder
of a 5- cho holding prospers he buys a second farm and more
horses and implements, and hires labour for the busy period.
But 10 or 15 cAo is considered as much as can be worked in
this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15 cho it is diflRcult
to get labour in the busy season, for it is the busy season for
everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only at
an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then
the lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his
holding.' The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 cho.
(Stock farming is for milk rather than for meat, and more
than one condensed-milk factory is in operation.) Even
in Hokkaido large farming, as it is understood in Great
Britain and America, is not easy to find. '

On my journey north from Sapporo the first thing which
brought home to me the colonial character of the agricul-
ture was the tree stumps sticking up in the paddies. The
second was the extent to which the rivers were still uncon-
trolled. The longest river in Japan, 260 miles long, is in
Hokkaido. There was obviously a vast moorland area in
need of draining. Peat — there are 300,000 cho of it —
may be a standby when the waste of timber that is going
on brings about a shortage of fuel other than coal. From
poor peat soil, which was growing oats, buckwheat and
millet, we passed to land capable of producing rice, and saw
ploughing with horses. One region had been opened for
only twenty years, but already the farmers had cultivated
the hillsides in the assiduous fashion of Old Japan.

From Ashigawa we made some excursions in a prim
basha to places which were always several miles farther on
than they were supposed to be and were usually reached by
tracks covered with stones from 6 to 9 ins. long and
having ruts a foot deep.

1 For farmers' incomes, see Appendix XIII.
' For sizes of farms, see Appendix LXIV.

STARCH AND PEPPERMINT FACTORIES 889

We visited a large estate with 350 tenants who were
mostly working 2^ cho, though some had twice as much.
Nearly all of these tenants appeared to have one or two
horses, although the estate manager had advised them to
use oxen or cows as more economical draught animals.
When I remembered the distance the farmers were from
the town and the state of the roads, and noticed the satis-
faction which the men we passed displayed in being able to
ride, it was easy to believe that the possession of a horse
might have its value as a means of social progress. During
the last ten years half the tenants had made enough to
enable them to buy farms. The tenants on this estate had
two temples and one shrine.'

I visited a fifteen-years-old co-operative alcohol factory
with a capital of 300,000 yen. Of its materials 80 per
cent, seemed to be potato starch waste and 20 per cent,
maize. The product was 6,000 or 7,000 koku of alcohol.
The dividend was 8 per cent. On the waste a large number
of pigs was fed. The animals were kept in pens with
boarded floors within a small area, and I was not surprised
to learn that three or four died every month. Starch
making, which produces the waste used by the alcohol
factory, is managed on quite a small scale. An outfit may
cost no more than 30 or 50 yen. I went over a small
peppermint- making plant. Most of the peppermint raised
in Japan — it reaches a value of 2 million yen — is grown
in Hokkaido.

One day in the eastern part of the island I met in a small
hotel, which was run by a man and his wife who had been
in America, several old farmers who had obviously made
money. They declared that formerly only 20 per cent, of
the colonists succeeded, but now the proportion was more
than 65 per cent. I imagine that they meant by success
that the colonists did really well, for it was added that it was
rare in that district for people to return to Old Japan. One
of the company said that not more than 5per cent, returned.
" Land is too expensive at home," he continued; " when
a Japanese comes here and gets some, he works hard."

^ For a tenant'* contract, see Appendix LXV.

340 COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

A good man, they said, should make, after four or five
years, 70 to 100 yen clear profit in a year.

I rather suspect that the men I talked with had made
some of their money by advancing funds to their neigh-
bours on mortgage. They all seemed to own several farms.
When I asked how religion prospered in Hokkaido they
said with a smile, " There are many things to do here, so
there is no spare time for religion as in our native places."
There is a larger proportion of Christians in Hokkaido
than on the mainland. One village of a thousand inhabit-
ants contained two churchesand a SalvationArmy barracks.
It was reputed, also, to have eight or ten " waitresses "
and five sake shops. It is said that a good deal of shochu,
which is stronger than sake, is drunk.

The roughest basha ride I made was to a place seven
miles from railhead in the extreme north-east. Such roads
as we adventured by are little more than tracks with ditches
on either side. The journey back, because there were no
horses to ride, we made in a narrow but extraordinarily
heavy farm wagon with wheels a foot wide and drawn by a
stallion. Shortly after starting there was a terrific thunder-
storm which soaked us and hastened uncomfortably the
pace of the animal in the shafts. When the worst of the
downpour was over, and we had faced the prospect of
slithering about the wagon for the rest of the journey, for
the stallion had decided to hurry, a farmer's wife asked us
for a lift and clambered in with agility. My companion
and I were then sitting in a soggy state with our backs
against the wagon front andour legsoutstretchedresignedly.
The cheery farmer's wife, who was wet too, plopped down
between us and, as the bumps came, gripped one of my legs
with much good fellowship. She was a godsend by reason
of her plumpness, for we were now wedged so tight that we
no longer rocked and pitched about the wagon at each jolt.
And no doubt we dried more quickly. Providence had
indeed been good to us, for shortly afterwards we passed,
lying on its side in a spruit, the basha that had carried us
on our outward journey.

We were three hours in all in the wagoh. Our passenger
told us that her husband had several farms and that they

A FORMULA FOR WASTRELS 341

were very comfortably off and very glad that they had come
to Hokkaido. When the farmer's wife had to alight a
mile from our destination we chose to walk. Bad roads are
a serious problem for the Hokkaido farmer. In one district,
only fifteen miles from the capital, they are so bad that
rice is at half the price it makes in Sapporo. It is un-
fortunate that the roads are at their worst in autumn and
spring when the farmer wants to transport his produce.

I visited the 700- acre settlement which Mr. Tomeoka has
opened in connection with his Tokyo institution for the
reclamation of young wastrels. His formula is, " Feed
them well, work them hard and give them enough sleep."
Among the volumes on his shelves there were three
books about Tolstoy and another three, one English, one
American and one German, all bearing the same title,
The Social Question. Needless to say that Self-Help had its
place.

I liked Mr. Tomeoka's idea of an open-air chapel on a tree-
shaded height from which there was a fine view. It re-
minded me of the view from an open space on rising ground
near the famous Danish rural high school of Askov, from
which, on Sundays, parties of excursionists used to look
down enviously on Slesvig and irritate the Germans by
singing Danish national songs. Mr. Tomeoka believed in
better houses and better food for farmers and in money
raised by means of the ko — " the rules and regulations of
co-operative societies are too complicated for farmers to
understand."

I saw the huts of some settlers who had weathered their
first Hokkaido winter. Buckwheat, scratched in in open
spaces among the trees, was the chief crop. The huts con-
sisted of one room. Most of the floor was raised above
the ground and covered with rough straw matting. In the
centre of the platform was the usual fire-hole. The walls
were matting and brushwood. I was assured that "the
snow and good fires, for which there is unlimited fuel, keep
the huts warm."

The railway winds through high hills and makes sharp
curves and steep ascents and descents. There are tracts
of rolling country under rough grass. Sometimes these

842 COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

areas have been cleared by forest fires started by lightning.
Wide spaces are a great change from the scenery of closely
farmed Japan. The thing that makes the hillsides different
from our wilder English and Scottish hillsides is that there
are neither sheep nor cattle on them.

When the culpable destruction of timber in Hokkaido is
added to what has been lost by forest fires, due to lightning
or to accident — one conflagration was more than 200 acres
in extent^ — it is easy to realise that the rivers are bringing
far more water and detritus from the hills than they ought
to do and are preparing flood problems with which it will
cost millions to cope when the country gets more closely
settled. It is deplorable that, apart from needless burning
on the hillsides, the farmers have not been dissuaded from
completely clearing their arable land of trees. On many
holdings there is not even a clump left to shelter the
farmhouse and buildings. In not a few districts the colon-
ists have created treeless plains. In place after place the
once beautiful countryside is now ugly and depressing.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT ?
Bon yori shoko (Proof, not argument)

One day in Tokyo I heard a Japanese who was looking at a
photograph of a British woman War-worker feeding pigs
ask if the animals were sheep. Sheep are so rare in Japan
that an old ram has been exhibited at a country fair as a
lion. In contrast with Western agriculture based on live
stock we have in Japan an agriculture based on rice.'
But a section of the Japanese agricultural world turns its
eyes longingly to mixed farming, and so, when I returned
to Sapporo from my trip to the north of Hokkaido, I was
taken to see a Government stock farm — with a smoking
volcano in the background. Hokkaido has four other
official farms, one belonging to the Government and one for
raising horses for the £(rmy. I was shown, in addition to
horses, Ayrshire, Holstein and Brown Swiss cattle, Berk-
shire and Yorkshire pigs and Southdown and Shropshire
sheep in good buildings. I noticed two self-binders and a
hay loader and I beheld for the first time in Japan a dairy-
maid and collies — one was of a useless show type.

The extent to which the knack of looking after animals
and a liking for them can be developed is an interesting
question. Experts in stock-keeping with generations of
experience behind them will agree that it is on the answer
to this question that the success or non-success of the
Japanese in animal industry in no small measure depends.

I have a note of a discussion on the general treatment
of domestic animals in Japan in the course of which it was
admitted that they were " certainly not treated as well as
in most parts of Europe, or as in China." One reason given

1 For statistics of cultivated area and live stock, see Appendix LXVI.
24 343

344 SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT ?

was that " most sects believe in the reincarnation of the
wicked in the form of animals." The freedom which dogs
enjoyed in English houses seemed strange ; my friends no
doubt forgot that Western houses have no tatami to be
preserved. It was contended, however, that cavalry
soldiers " often weep on parting from their horses " and
that " people with knowledge of animals are fond of them."
I have myself seen farmers' wives in tears at a horse fair
when the foals they had reared were to be sold and the
animals in their timidity nuzzled them. Westerners who
are familiar with the exquisite and humoursome studies
of animal, bird and insect life by Japanese artists of the
past and present day,^ are in no doubt that such work was
prompted by real knowledge and love of the "lower
creation." The Japanese have a keen appreciation of the
" song " of an amazing variety of " musical " insects —
there are 20,000 kinds of insects. It is an appreciation
not vouchsafed to the foreigner whose nerves are racked
by the insistent bizz of the semi or cicada — there are
38 kinds of cicada. Everyone will recall Hearn's chapter
on the trade in " singing insects."

One of my hosts in Aichi had two tiny cages which each
contained one of these creatures. The cages were hung
from the eaves. In the evening when the stone lantern in
the garden was lit, and it was desired to give an illusion of
greater coolness after a hot day a servant was sent up to the
roof to pour down a tubful of water in order to produce the
dripping sound of rain ; and this at once set the caged in-
sects chirping.

The sensitive foreigner is distressed by the way in which
newly born puppies and kittens are thrown out to die
because their Buddhist owners are too scrupulous to kill
them. The stranger's feelings are also worked on by the
unhappy demeanour and uncared-for look of dogs and cats.
On chancing to enter in a Japanese city an English
home where there were three dogs I could not but mark

1 One thinks of Takeuchi Seiho who lives in Kyoto, of Toba Sojo (11th
century) for monkeys, frogs and bullocks, and in the Tokugawa period
of Okio for dogs and carp, of Jakchii for fowls and birds, of Hasegawa
Tohaku and Sosen for monkeys, of Kawanabe Kyosai for crows, and of
Kesai and Hokusai for birds, fish and insects.

THE PENSIONED HENS 845

how they contrasted in bearing and appearance with the
generality of the animals I had seen. Yet these dogs were
all mongrel foundlings which had been abandoned near my
friend's house or dropped into her garden. No doubt
most Japanese dogs suffer from having too much rice — and
poUshed at that — and practically no bones. An excuse
for the neglect of cats is that they scratch woodwork and
tatami and insist on carrying their food into the best room.

Horses are often overloaded and mercilessly driven on
hilly roads.' On the other hand, carters lead their horses.
It might be added that the coohes who haul and push hand-
carts bearing enormous loads never spare themselves. I
was told more than once of people who had been too tender-
hearted to make an end of old horses. I also heard of
hens which had been allowed to live on until they died of
old age. In some mountain communities it is the custom,
when a chicken must be killed for a visitor's meal, for an
exchange of birds to be made with a neighbour in order
that the killing may not be too painful for the owner."

Except in hotels and stores in Tokyo and the cities which
cater for foreigners, one seldom sees such an animal product
as cheese. On the Government farm I found excellent
cheese and butter being made. Untravelled Japanese
have the dislike of the smell of cheese that Western people
have of the stench of boiling daikon. Nor is cheese the
only alien food with which the ordinary Japanese has a
difficulty. The smell of mutton is repugnant to him and
he has yet to acquire a taste for milk. The demand for
milk is increasing, however. The guide books are quite
out of date. Nearly all the milk ordinarily sold for foreign-

' Nevertheless it is well not to be hasty in judgment. On the day on
which this footnote was written, April 7, 1921, I find the following items
in the Daily Mail. On page 4 the Attorney-General regrets that the law
tolerates the " cruel practice " by which 30 pigeons were killed or injured
at a certain pigeon-shooting competition and expresses inability to bring in
legislation. On page 5, col. 2, an M.P. is reported as mentioning a case
in which a puppy had been kicked to death and as asking the Home
Secretary whether the law imposing imprisonment for a short term could not
be strengthened. On the same page, col. 5, » railway porter is reported
as having been fined for flinging three small calves into a farm cart by
the tails.

' For poultry statistics, see Appendix LXVII.

346 SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT ?

ers and invalids is supplied sterilised in bottles. On the
platforms of the larger railway stations bottles of milk are
vended from a copper container holding hot water. In
places where I have been able to obtain bread I have usually
had no difficulty in getting milk. (The word for bread,
fan, has been in the language since the coming of the
Portuguese, and all over Japan one finds sponge cake,
kasutera, a word frona the Spanish.) Butter in country
hotels is usually rancid, for the reason, I imagine, that it
is carelessly handled and kept too long and that few
Japanese know the taste of good butter. The development
of a liking for bread and butter is obviously one of the condi-
tions of the establishment of a successful animal industry.
Condensed milk is sold in large quantities, but chiefly to
supplement infants' supplies and to make sweetstuff. The
1919 production was estimated at 57 million tins.

One argument for an animal industry is that with an
increasing population the fish supply will not go so far as it
has done. It is said that fish are not to be found in as large
quantities as formerly. Another argument is that the
national imports include many products of animal industry
which might be advantageously produced at home. Not
only is more milk, condensed and fresh, being consumed :
with the adoption of foreign clothes in professional and
business life and in the army and navy, more and more
wool is being worn ' and more and more leather is needed
for the boots which are being substituted for geta and also
for service requirements. It is contended that for the
emancipation of Japanese agriculture from the petite
culture stage it is essential that a larger number of draught
oxen and horses shall be used. It is equally important, it
is suggested, that more manure shall be made on the farms,
so that a limit shall be placed on the outlay on imported
fertilisers. Finally there are those who urge that the
Japanese should be better fed and that better feeding can
only be brought about by an increased consumption of
animal products."

' Before the extensive use of yofuku (foreign clothes) the dress of Japanese
men and women was entirely of cotton and silk or of cotton only. Much
of the material from which yo uhu are made is no doubt cotton.
See Appendix LXVIII

PORK FOR JAPAN 347

The possibilities of outdoor stock keeping in Hokkaido
are limited by the fact that snow lies from November to
the middle of February and in the north of the island to the
end of March. A high agricultural authority did not think
that the number of cattle in all Japan could be raised to
more than two million within twenty years.'

In the management of sheep — there were about 5,000 in
the whole country when I was in Hokkaido — there has been
failure after failure, but it is held that the prospects for
sheep in Hokkaido are promising. (The question is dis-
cussed in the next Chapter.) At present, owing to the lack
of a market for mutton, pigs, which used to be kept in the
days before Buddhism exerted its influence, seem more
attractive to experimenting farmers than sheep. No one
has proposed that sheep should be kept in ones and twos
for milking as in Holland.' When milk is needed it is said
that goats, of which there are more than 90,000 in Japan,
are desirable stock, but I doubt whether more than 500 of
these goats are milked.' They are kept to produce meat.
Some people hope that those who eat goat's flesh will come
to realise the superiority of mutton.

The case for pigs is that sweet potatoes and squash can
be fed to them, that they produce frequent litters, that pork
is more and more appreciated, and that there are 800,000
of them in the country already. Some confident experts
who have possibly been influenced by the large consump-
tion of pork in China argue that pork may become equally
popular in Japan. There are two bacon factories not far
from Tokyo.

As in other countries, the argument for doing away with
foreign imports is pushed in Japan to ridiculous lengths.
Japan, which aims above all at being an exporting country,
cannot attain her desire without receiving imports to pay for

> The number of cattle, which was 1,342,587 in 1916, was only 1,307,120
in 1918. See also Appendix LXVI.

'For photographs and particulars of the milk sheep, see my Free
Fa/rmer in a Free State.

' The value of the well-bred and well-cared-for goat as a milk and manure
producer is underestimated. The problem of keeping goats in such a way
that they shall not be destructive and shall yield the maximum of manure
is discussed in my Case for the Ooat.

348 SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT ?

her exports.' The physiological argument for an animal
industry is unconvincing. The Japanese have a long
dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little fish and
a few eggs. There exists in Japan an exceptionally in-
genious variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the
vegetable kingdom, and the Japanese have become ac-
customed to digest vegetable protein.' It might be
suggested, with some show of reason, that in this matter of
the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more
under the influence of foreign ideas which are a little out
of date.' In Europe and America there is evidence of a
decreasing meat consumption among educated people, and
medical papers are full of counsels to diminish the amount
of meat consumed. There is also in the West an increasing
sensitiveness to the horrors inflicted on animals in trans-
portation by rail and steamer, and if an animal industry
were established in Japan there would certainly be a great
deal of transportation by rail and steamer from the breeding
to the rearing districts, and from these districts to the
slaughtering centres. If the present advocacy of an animal
industry for Japan should triumph over the reluctance to
take animal life inculcated by Buddhism it is hardly likely
to be regarded in the West as a forward step in the ethical
evolution of the Japanese.*

I had the good fortune to meet in Sapporo a man who

1 This question as it aSeots an agricultural country is discussed in
A Free Farmer in a Free State.

' There is a consensus of scientific opinion that " non-meat eating " races
such as the Japanese have longer alimentary tracts than flesh-eating Europ-
eans. It is difficult to be precise on the subject, an eminent Western
surgeon tells me, for bowels are as contractile as worms, which at one
minute measure 100 unite in length and the next minute have shortened to
30. So much depends on the state at death.

' On the other hand, the Japanese have taken up many new things at
the point which we in the West have only recently reached. They begin
to produce milk and supply it, not in the milkman's pail, but in steriUsed
bottles. They abandon osmdles and lamps and, practically skipping gas,
adopt electric light. Three-quarters of the cities, towns and villages have
electric light or power. The capital invested in electric enterprises in 1919
was about 700 million yen or seven times that invested in gas.

* There is one blameless form of stock-keeping which is developing in
Hokkaido. Bees, which have still to make their way in Old Japan, are
now 6,000 hives strong in the northern island, though a stact was made only
six or seven years ago.

WHAT JAPANESE EAT

849

has made a special study of the food of the Japanese people,
Professor Morimoto of the University. He said that he
had no doubt that when the Japanese began to eat bread
instead of rice they would develop a taste for meat as well
as butter. With great kindness he placed at my disposal
statistics which he afterwards expanded in a thesis for
Johns Hopkins University. He had investigated the
dietary of the families of 200 tenants of the University
farms. Reduced to terms of men per day the result was :

Rice (1-95 go) .
(Naked) barley (8-45 go)
Fish ....
Miso
Shoyu (soy)

Sen.
4-2
8-3
10

•7

•03

Vegetables
Pickles '
Sak6 .
Sugar .

Sen.
. 2-2
. -6
. -08
. -02

1218

Or at Tokyo prices, 14-3 sen. On averaging, in terms of
per man per day, the food and drink consumption of all
Japan, Professor Morimoto found the result to be :

Sen.

Sen;

Grain

6-60

Fruits .

. -40

Legumes .

•89

Sugar .

. -53

Vegetables

2-00

Salt

. -20

Fish and seaweeds

•54

Tea

. 10

Beef and veal

•10]

Alcoholic

Other animal food

•08

liquor

. 1-50

Chicken

•03

•83 Tobacco

. 45

Eggs

•13

Milk

•04

1804'

The Professor compares with these totals the 84^4 sen and
89^3 sen per day which seem to represent the cost of the
food of the rank and file in the navy and army, and three

' It is illustrative of the extent to which pickle is consumed in Japan
that a family in Sapporo was found to have eaten no fewer than 283 daikon
in a year.

2 The reader must put away the impression which this table gives of a
varied dietary. Few Japanese have such a range of food. The average
man habitually lives on rice, bean products {tofu, bean jelly and miso,
soft bean cheese), pickles, vegetables, tea, a little fish and sometimes
eggs. People of narrow means see little of eggs and not much fish, unless
it be kataubushi.

350 SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT ?

standards of diet issued by the official Bureau of Hygiene
providing for expenditures of 32'1 sen, 33 sen and 44-4 sen
respectively. (All the prices I have cited are dated 1915.)
Beef and pork as well as fish are used in the army and navy.
The navy also uses bread.

Professor Morimoto estimates that a Japanese may be
fairly expected to consume only 80 per cent, of what a
foreigner needs, for the average weight of Japanese is only
13 hwan 830 momme to the European's 17 kwan 20 momme.
My personal impression, which I give merely for what it is
worth, for I have made no investigation of the subject, is
that, though Japanese may thrive on meagre fare, they eat
large quantities of food when their resources permit of
indulgence. The common ailment seems to be " stomach
ache." This may be due to eating at irregular hours, to an
unbalanced dietary, to the eating of undercooked viands
or to occasional over-eating, or to all of these causes.'
Undoubtedly there is much room for dietetic reform.

Professor Morimoto had come to the conclusion " that
there is under-feeding, largely due to a bad choice of foods,
that the relation of the nutritive value of foods to their cost
is insufficiently studied and that cooking can be improved."
It is of course an old criticism of the Japanese table that
food is either imperfectly cooked or prepared too much
with a view to appearance. The Professor's finding was
that the Japanese need the addition of meat and bread to
their dietary. As far as meat is concerned he did not con-
vince me. Let me quote him on the soy bean : " It is a
remarkably good substitute for meat. It is very low in
price but its nutritive value is very high. The essential
element of miso, tofu and shoyu is soy bean." Bread is
another matter. The Japanese Navy, presumably be-

' The watering of vegetables with liquid manure, the usual practice of
the Japanese farmer, and the pollution of the paddies make salads and
insufficiently cooked green stuff dangerous and many water supplies of
questionable purity. Great efforts have been made to provide safe tap
water from the hills. Intestinal parasites are common. The build of the
Japanese makes for strength, but in the urban areas there is much absence
from work on the plea of ill-health. Both in Japan and in England I have
been struck by the fact that when I made an excursion with an urban
Japanese he often tired before I did, and on none of these trips was I in
anything like first-class condition.

THE CASE AGAINST RICE 851

cause it may find itself far from Japan, has accustomed its
sailors to eat bread, and a case can certainly be made out
for the general population not relying on rice as a grain
food. But, as the large quantities of barley eaten show,
there is no such reliance now. Morimoto urged that while
there might be no difference in the nutritive value of wheat
and rice, rice as tisually eaten induced " abnormal disten-
sion of the stomach and poor nutrition." Again, wheat
was a world crop,' whereas rice, owing to the Japanese
objection to foreign rice, was a local crop. If the Japanese
were users of wheat as well as of rice they would not have
to pay so much for food, when, on the failure of the rice crop
in considerable parts of Japan, the price of rice was high.
" The consumption is about 10 million bushels more than
the production." Further, rice was more costly in cultiva-
tion than wheat, and its production could not be increased so
as to keep pace with the increase in population. The yield,
which was 46 million koku in 1904, was only 50 millions in
1912 ; and 65 millions in 1927 seemed an excessive
estimate. In 1912 the importation of rice was 2 million
hoku. But on all these points the reader should take note of
the data on page 84 and in Appendices XXIV and XXV.
The Professor's concluding point against rice was that it
was expensive to prepare. The washing of the rice in a
succession of waters and the cleaning of the sticky pot in
which it was cooked and of the equally sticky tub in which
it was served took a great deal of time. Then in order to
cook rice properly — and the Japanese have become connois-
seurs— the exact proportion of water must be gauged. The
supplies of rice to be cooked were so considerable that the
name of the servant lass was " girl to boil the rice." But
when bread was used instead of rice, said the Professor
jubilantly, a baking twice a week would do. Why, an hour a
day might be saved, which in twenty years would be 73,000
hours, or a whole year, and, reckoning women's labour as
worth 5 sen an hour, that would be a saving of 565 yen !

1 Many Japanese look forward to a great production of wheat on the
north-eastern Asiatic mainland under Japanese auspices. In considering
imports of wheat it shotild be remembered that some of it is used in soy
and macaroni.

CHAPTER XXXIX

MUST THE JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN " YOFUKU " ? '

" God damn all foreigners ! " — Jnterrupier at one of Mr. Gladstone's
early meetings at Oxford

When I was in Hokkaido sheep were being experimented
with at different places on the mainland, investigators and
sheep buyers had gone off to Australia, New Zealand and
South America, and a Tokyo Sheep Bureau of two dozen
officials had been established. Great hopes were built on
a few hundred sheep in Hokkaido.' But I noticed that
Government farm sheep were under cover on a warm
September day. Also I heard of trouble with two well-
known sheep ailments. There was talk nevertheless of the
day when there would be a million sheep in Hokkaido,
perhaps three millions. On the mainland I also met high
officials and enthusiastic prefectural governors who dreamed
dreams of sheep farming in Old Japan, where land is costly,
farms small, agriculture intensive, grazing ground to seek,
and farmland necessarily damp. This sheep keeping is
conceived as one animal or perhaps two on a holding as
rather unhappy by-products. The notion is that the wool
and manure of a sheep would meet the expense of its keep
and that the mutton would be profit. Hopes of an extension
of sheep breeding resting on such a basis seem to be extrava-
gant. One high authority told me that it would take
twenty or thirty years to develop sheep keeping.

The sheep at present in Japan are not living in natural
conditions. They feed on cultivated crops. Sheep could
hardly live a week on natural Japanese pasture. The
wild herbage is full of the sharp bamboo grass. In the

' Yofuku means foreign clothes.

' In 1920 there were 8,219 sheep in Japan, including 945 in Hokkaido.

352

THE SHEEP PROBLEM 858

summer much of the eatable herbage dries up. Not only
must sheep endure the summer heat and insects ; they must
survive the trying rainy season. But they must do more
than merely endure and survive. In order to produce good
wool it is necessary that they shall be in good condition.
The hair of one's head immediately shows the effect of
imperfect nutrition or unhealthy conditions, and it is the
same with the wool on the back of the sheep.

It is said that the quaUty of the wool on the sheep kept
in Japan depreciates. However this may be, it is plain that
sheep breeding must be conducted on a large scale in order
to produce wool in commercial quantities and of even
quality. Some notion of the land normally required for
sheep may be estimated from the fact that Australian
pasture carries no more than four sheep per acre.^

An improvement of Japanese herbage sufficient to fit it
for sheep would be a heavy task even in small areas. It is
not only the herbage but the rocks below it which are all
wrong for sheep, if we are to judge by the geological forma-
tions on which sheep flourish in the West. If the sheep were
put on cultivated land ' or placed on straw as I saw them
in Hokkaido there would be serious risks of foot rot. No
doubt there would also be insect pests to control. If Japan
set up sheep keeping she would no doubt have to devise her
own special breed of sheep, for the well-known Western
breeds are artificial products. Probably the experiments
which are being made in China with sheep at an earlier stage
of development are proceeding on the right lines. I have
already spoken of the fact that a Japanese taste for mutton
has yet to be cultivated.

This is a formidable list of difficulties confronting the
new Governmental Sheep Bureau. No doubt much may be
done by a large expenditure of money and much patience.
The Japanese have wrought marvels before by spending
money and having a large stock of patience. Account must
also be taken of the spirit reflected in the speech made to me

'■ A sheep produces about 7 lbs. of wool in the year. But this is the
unsooured weight. In Japan, an expert assured me, it would not reach
more than 56 to 60 per cent, when scoured.

2 "To-day sheep cannot be kept on arable to leave any reward to the
fanner. " — Country Life, August 20, 1921.

354 MUST JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN " YOFUKU " ?

by a Japanese friend when I read the foregoing paragraph
to him :

" But we are keen to try. If there were no necessity to
prepare for war, when we must have wool for soldiers,
sailors and officials, we might rely on Australia and else-
where and hope to improve the inferior and dirty Chinese
wool. But thinking of the disease prevailing in Northern
Manchuria and of service needs, we want to try sheep keep-
ing with some subsidy in Hokkaido and on the mainland
in Northern Aomori where there is much dry wild land and
the farmers are often miserable — there are villages where
the people do not wash. We might provide some of the
wool needed by Japan. We have practically met our needs
in sugar, though of course our needs are small compared
with England and America."

Let us turn from the sheep problem to the factory prob-
lem. What are the difficulties of the woollen industry ?
In the first place, as we have seen, there is no home supply
of wool worth mentioning. Further, there is the intricacy
of woollen manufacture. Cotton machinery has been
brought to such a pitch of perfection for every operation
and there are in existence so many technical manuals for
every department of cotton manufacture that a certain
standardisation of output is not difficult. The problem
of woollen manufacture is much more comphcated. The
output cannot be similarly standardised, and there are
many directions in which originality, self-reliance and
experience come into play decisively.

In the woollen districts of Great Britain the operatives
are people who have been in the trade all their lives, whose
parents and grandparents have been in the trade before
them. There is not only an hereditary aptitude but an
hereditary interest. There is not only an individual interest
but an interest of the whole community. The welfare of a
town or city is wrapped up in the woollen industry. This
is not so in Japan. The mill workers in the Tokyo prefec-
ture, for example, come from remote parts of Japan, and
the girls — and three-quarters of the employees of the woollen
industry are girls — are merely on a three-years contract.
The girls arrive absolutely inexperienced. Even in England

OF JAPANESE GOODS 855

it is considered that it takes two or three years to make a
worker skilful. Within the three-years period for which
the Japanese mill girls or their parents contract, as many as
30 per cent, leave the mills and, appalling fact, from 20 to
25 per cent, die.' Not more than 10 per cent, renew their
three-years contract. Therefore there is, at present at
any rate, little real skilled labour in the factories. Another
difficulty is the absence of skilful wool sorters. Even
before the War a good wool sorter commanded in England
from £3 to £4 a week. One of the things which hampers
the Japanese woollen industry is the prevalence of illness
at the factories. They must have, in consequence, about
25 per cent, more labour than is needed.

Generally one would say that the industry at its present
stage is not only weak on the labour side,' but, where it
is efficient, is skilful rather in imitation than in original
design. Ever5rthing produced is an imitation of foreign
designs. That is not an unnatural state of things, however,
at the commencement of a new industry.

With regard to the old complaint of Japanese goods
failing to come up to sample, the shortcoming is often due
not to intentional dishonesty but simply to inability to
produce a uniform product. In one factory an order had
to be filled by bringing together work from 300 different
places. The first delivery of the cloth produced for the
Russian army was like the sample, but the later deliveries,
though of excellent material, were not, for the simple reason
that the precise raw materials for the required blending
did not exist in Japan.

One of the marvels of the industry is the high prices
obtained in Japan. The best winter serge was selUng in
England before the War at 8s. a yard. The Japanese price
for winter serge was from 5 to 6 yen. Before the War it
was possible to import cloth at 50 per cent, less than the
local rates. Nevertheless there seemed to be a market for
everything. Japanese cloth lacks finish but it is made out
of good materials and will wear. The factories are com-
pelled to use a better quahty of material in order to get
anywhere near the appearance of imported goods. A
^ See Appendix LXIX. ^ See Appendix LXX.

856 MUST JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN " YOFUKU " ?

foreign manufacturer, " owing to his skill in manufacture,"
as it was once explained to me, may produce a cloth of a
certain quality containing only 10 per cent, new wool :
the Japanese manufacturer, in order to produce a com-
parable article must use 30 per cent, new wool. Obviously
this means that the Japanese factory must charge higher
prices.

In considering the position of the industry it is natural
to ask how it would be affected if the Japanese factories
were able to draw more largely upon Manchuria for wool.
The answer is that the sheep in Manchuria at present yield
what is called " China " wool, which is suitable only for
blankets and coarse cloth.

To some who feel a sympathy for Japan in her present
stage of industrial development and are inclined to take
long views it may seem a pity that she should contemplate
making such a radical change in her national habits as is
represented by the demand for woollen materials and for
meat. Japanese dress, easy, hygienic and artistic though
it is, and admirably suited for wearing in Japanese dwell-
ings, is ill adapted for modern business life, not to speak of
factory conditions. But it has not yet been demonstrated
that Japan is under the necessity of substituting, to so
large an extent as she evidently contemplates doing,
woollen for cotton and silk clothing, and Western clothing
for her own characteristic raiment.' The cotton padded
garment and bed cover are both warm and clean. It is
odd that this new demand on the part of Japan for woollen
material should coincide with movements in Europe and
America to utilise more cotton, for underclothing at any
rate. There is undoubtedly a hygienic case of a certain
force against wool. The same is true of meat. It may well
be that the dietary of many Japanese has not been si^-
ciently nutritious, but much of the meat-eating which is now
being indulged in seems to be due more to an aping of
foreign ways than to physical requirements. The more meat

1 An immense amount of silk is used in Japanese men's clothing. The
kimono, except the cheaper summer kind and the bath kimono {yukata),
which are cotton, is silk. So are the hakama (divided skirt) and the
haori (overcoat). Japanese women's clothes are largely silk. The dress
of working people is cotton, but even they have some silk clothing.

TEN YEARS HENCE 857

Japan eats and the more she dresses herself in wool the
more she places herself under the control of the foreigner.'
Whatever degree of success may attend sheep breeding
within the limits imposed upon it by physical conditions
in Japan, the raw material of the woollen industry must be
mostly a foreign product. As far as meat is concerned,
it is difficult to believe that while the agriculture of
Japan is based upon rice production there is room for the
production of meat on a large scale. If the meat and wool
are to be produced in Manchuria and Mongolia we shall see
what we shall see. The significance of the experiment of
the Manchuria Railway Company since 1913 in crossing
merino and Mongolian sheep and the work which is being
done on the sheep runs of Baron Okura in Mongolia cannot
be overlooked. Ten years hence it will be interesting to
examine industrially and socially the position of the woollen
industry ' and the animal industry in Japan and on the
mainland, and the net gain that the country has made.

» " By degrees they proceeded to all the stimulations of banqueting
which was indeed part of their bondage." — Tacitus on the Britons under
Roman influence.

2 The industry has already made on the London market an impression
of competence in some directions. For production and exports, see
Appendix LXX,

CHAPTER XL

THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

Concerning these things, they are not to be delivered but from much
intercourse and discussion. — Plato

Emigrants do not willingly seek a climate worse than their
own. This is one of the reasons why the development of
Hokkaido has not been swifter. The island is not much
farther from the mainland than Shikoku, but it is near, not
the richest and warmest part of the mainland, but the
poorest and the coldest. If we imagine another Scotland
lying off Cape Wrath, at the distance of Ireland from Scot-
land, and with a climate corresponding to the northerly
situation of such a supposititious island, we may reahse how
remoteness and climatic limitations have hindered the
progress of Hokkaido.

" Our mode of living is not suited to the colder climate,"
an agricultural professor said to me. " Poor emigrants
do not have money enough to build houses with stoves and
properly fitting windows."

To what extent the modified farming methods rendered
necessary by the Hokkaido climate have had a deterring
effect on would-be settlers I do not know. It has never
been demonstrated that the Japanese farmer prefers ardu-
ous amphibious labour to the dry-land farming in which
most of the world's land workers are engaged ; but the
cultivation of paddy or a large proportion of paddy is his
traditional way of farming. Rice culture also means to
him the production of the crop which, when weather con-
ditions favour, is more profitable than any other. In
Hokkaido, as we have seen, the remunerative kind of agri-
culture is mixed farming, and, in a large part of the country,
rice cannot be grown at all. Against objections to
Hokkaido on the ground of the strangeness of its farming

358

LAND GRABBERS AND WASTERS 359

may probably be set, however, the cheapness of land
there.

An undoubted hindrance to the colonisation of Hokkaido
has been land scandals and land grabbing. Many of
what the late Lord Salisbury called the " best bits " are
in the hands of big proprietors or proprietaries. Some
large landowners no doubt show public spirit. But
their class has contrived to keep farmers from getting
access to a great deal of land which, because of its
quality and nearness to practicable roads and the
railway, might have been worked to the best advantage.
In various parts of Japan I heard complaints. " The
land system in Hokkaido," one man in Aichi said to
me, "is so queer that land cannot be got by the families
needing it, I mean good land." Again in Shikoku I was
assured that " the most desirable parts of the Hokkaido
are in the hands of capitalists who welcome tenants only."
In more than one part of northern Japan I was told of
emigrants to Hokkaido who had " returned dissatisfied."
A charge made against the large holder of Hokkaido land
is that he is an absentee and a city man who lacks the
knowledge and the inchnation to devote the necessary
capital to the development of his estate. Of late the rise in
the value of timber has induced not a few proprietors to
interest themselves much more in stripping their land of
trees than in developing its agricultural possibiUties.

The development of Hokkaido may also have been slowed
down to some extent by a lower level of education among the
people than is customary on most of the mainland, by a
rougher and less skilful farming than is common in Old
Japan and by the existence of a residuum which would
rather " deal " or " let George do it " or cheat the Ainu
than follow the laborious colonial life. But no cause has
been more potent than a lack of money in the public
treasury. I was told that for five years in succession
Tokyo had cut down the Hokkaido budget. Necessary
public work and schemes for development have been
repeatedly stopped. At a time when the interests of Hok-
kaido demand more farmers and there is a general com-
plaint of lack of labour, at a time when there are per-
25

360 THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

sistent pleas for oversea expansion, there are in Japan
twice or thrice as many people applying for land in the
island as are granted entry. The blunt truth is that the
State has felt itself compelled to spend so much on mili-
tary and naval expansion that the claims of Hokkaido for
the wherewithal for better roads, more railway line and
better credit have often been put aside.'

One thing is certain, that slow progress in the develop-
ment of Hokkaido gives an opening to the critics of
Japan who doubt whether her need for expansion beyond
her own territory is as pressing as is represented by
some writers. However this may be, Hokkaido is stated
to take only a tenth of the overplus of the population of
Old Japan. The number of emigrants in 1913 was no
larger than the number in 1906. A usual view in Hokkaido
is that the island can hold twice as many people as it now
contains. " When 3,625,000 acres are brought into
cultivation," says an official publication, " Hokkaido will
be able easily to maintain 5,000,000 inhabitants on her own
products."

Very much of what has been achieved in Hokkaido has
been done under the stimulating influence of the Agri-
cultural College, now the University. The northern
climate seems to be conducive to mental vigour in both
professors and students. If in moving about Hokkaido
one is conscious of a somewhat materialistic view of progress
it may be remembered that an absorption in " getting on "
is characteristic of colonists and their advisers everjrwhere.
It is not high ideals of Ufe but bitter experience of inability
to make a living on the mainland which has brought immi-
grants to Hokkaido. As time goes on, the rm-al and
industrial development may have a less sordid look.' At

"■ A high authority assured me that 100 million yen (pre-War figures)
could be laid out to advantage. A Japanese economist's comment was :
" Why not touch on the extraordinary proportion of land owned by the
Imperial Household and also by the State for military purposes ? "

2 In driving through what seemed to be one of the best streets in
Sapporo, I noticed that some exceptionally large houses were the dwellings
of the registered prostitutes. Each house had a large ground-floor window.
Before it was a barrier about a yard high which cleared the ground, leaving
a space of about another yard. Such of the public as were interested were
able, therefore, to peer in without being identified from the street, for

WHAT HOKKAIDO HAS TAUGHT 361

present the visitor who lacks time to penetrate into the
fastnesses of Hokkaido and enjoy its natural beauties brings
away the unhappy impression which is presented by a view
of man's first assault on the wild.

But he must still be glad to have seen this distant part
of Japan. He finds there something stimulating and free
which seems to be absent from the older mainland. It is
possible that when Hokkaido shall have worked out her
destiny she may not be without her influence on the develop-
ment of Old Japan. Those of the settlers who are reason-
ably well equipped in character, wits and health are not
only making the living which they failed to obtain at home ;
they are testing some national canons of agriculture.
Face to face with strangers and with new conditions,
these immigrants are also examining some ideals of
social Ufe and conduct which, old though they are, may
not be perfectly adapted to the new age into which Japan
has forced herself. One evening in Hokkaido I saw a lone
cottage in the hills. At its door was the tall pole on which
at the Bon season the lantern is hung to guide the hovering
soul of that member of the family who has died during the
year. The settler's lantern, steadily burning high above
his hut, was an emblem of faith that man does not live
by gain alone which the hardest toil cannot quench. In
whatever guise it may express itself, it is the best hope for
Hokkaido and Japan.

During my stay in the island I had an opportunity of
meeting some of the most influential men from the Governor
downwards ; also several interesting visitors from the main-
land. We often found ourselves getting away from Hok-
kaido's problems to the general problems of rural life.

Of the good influences at work in the village, the first
I was once more assured, was " popular education and
school ethics, a real influence and blessing." The
second was " the disciplinary training of the army for

only their legs and feet were visible. In Tokyo and elsewhere this
exhibition of girls to the public has ceased. The place of the girls is taken
by enlarged framed photographs. I found on enquiry that the Sapporo
houses are so well organised as to have their proprietors' association. At a
little town like Obihiro an edifice was pointed out to me containing fifty
or more women.

362 THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

regularity of conduct." (" The influence of officers on
their young soldiers is good, and they give them or pro-
vide them with lectures on agricultural subjects and allow
them time to go in companies to experimental farms.")

Someone spoke of " the influence of the religion of the
past." " The religion of the past I " exclaimed an elderly
man ; "in half a dozen prefectures it may be that religion
is a rural force, but elsewhere in the Empire there is a lack
of any moral code that takes deep root in the head. After
all Christians are more trustworthy than people drinking
and playing with geisha."

On the other hand a prominent Christian said : " There
is a weakness in our Christians, generally speaking. There
is an absence of a sound faith. The native churches have
no strong influence on rural Ufe. There is often a certain
priggishness and pride in things foreign in saying, ' I am
a Christian.' "

Another man spoke in this wise : " I have been impressed
by some of the following of Uchimura. They seem ardent
and real. But I have also been attracted by strength of
character in members of various sects of Christians. The
theology and phraseology of these men may be curious, may
be in many respects behind the times, but their religion had
a beautiful aspect.' Many of our people have got some-
thing of Christian ethics, but are no church-goers. Some
Japanese try to combine Christian principles with old
Japanese virtues ; others with some soul supporting
Buddhistic ideas. We must have Christianity if only to
supply a great lack in our conception of personality.
People who have accepted Christianity show so much more
personality and so much more interest in social reform."

When we returned to agricultural conditions, one who
spoke with authority said : " In Old Japan the agricultural
system has become dwarfed. The individual cannot raise
the standard of living nor can crops be substantially in-
creased. The whole economy is too small.' The people

^ The classification is 101,571 Protestants, 76,983 Boman Catholics and
36,265 Greek Church.

2 " ' Spade fanning ' is an apt designation of the system of farming or
rather of cultivation, for little is done in the way of raising stock." —
Pbofessob Yoeoi.

ATTRACTIONS OF CALIFORNIA AND AUSTRALIA 363

are too close on the ground. They must spread out to north-
eastern Japan, to Hokkaido, Korea and Manchuria. The
population of Korea could be greatly increased. There is
an immense opening in Manchuria, which is four or five
times the area of the Japanese Empire and sparsely popu-
lated. There is also Mongolia." '

" But in Korea," one who had been there said, " there
are the Koreans, an able if backward people, to be con-
sidered— they will increase with the spread of our sanitary
methods among a population which was reduced by a
primitive hygiene and by maladministration. And as to
our people going to the mainland of Asia, we do not really
like to go where rice is not the agricultural staple, and we
prefer a warm country. In Formosa, where it is warm, we
are faced by the competition of the Chinese at a lower
standard of life." The perfect places for Japanese are
California, New Zealand and Australia, but the Americans
and Australasians won't have us. I do not complain ; we
do not allow Chinese labour in Japan. But we think that
we might have had Australasia or New Zealand if we had
not been secluded from the world by the Tokugawa regime,
and so allowed you British to get there first. It is not
strange that some of our dreamers should grudge you your
place there, should cherish ideas of expansion by walking
in your footsteps. But it is wisdom to realise that we
cannot do to-day what might have been done centuries ago
or make history repeat itself for our benefit. It is wiser
to seek to reduce the amount of misapprehension, prejudice
and — shall I say ? — national feehng in Japan and America
and Australasia, and try to procure ultimate accom-
modation for us all in that way. But not too much reduce,
perhaps, for, in the present posture of the world, nationa-

1 See Appendix XXX.

2 But surely the basic reason against a large emigration of farmers and
artisans to Formosa, or to Manchuria, Mongolia or Korea, with the
intention of working at their callings, is that the standard of living is lower
there ? The chief attraction of America and Australasia is that the standard
of living, is higher. The question of over- population must be considered
in relation to the facts in Appendices XXV, XXX and LXXX, and on
page 331. It is not established that the Japanese have now, or are likely
to have in the near future, a pressing need to emigrate.

864 THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

list feeling and — we do not want premature inter-marriage
— racial feeling are still valuable to mankind."

A speaker who followed said : " Remember to our credit
how our area under cultivation in Old Japan continually
increases.' Bear in mind, too, what good use we have
made of the land we have been able to get under cultivation
— so many thousand more cho of crops than there are cho
of land, due, of course, to the two or three crops a year
system in many areas." "

" As for the situation the emigrants ' leave behind them
in Old Japan," resumed the first speaker, " the experiment
should be tried of putting ten or so of tiny holdings * under
one control, and an attempt should be made to see what
improved implements and further co-operation' can
effect. I suppose the thing most needed on the naainland
is working capital at a moderate rate. Think of 900
million yen of farmers' debt, much of it at 12 per cent, and
some of it at 20 per cent. ! I do not reckon the millions of
prefectural, county and village debt. Of what value is it
to raise the rice crop to 3 or 4 koku per tan (60 or 80 bushels
per acre) ° if the moneylender profits most ? The farmers
of Old Japan are undoubtedly losing land to the moneyed
people.' Every year the number of farmers owning their
own land decreases " and the number of tenants increases
and more country people go to the towns.' And, as an
official statement says, ' the physical condition of the army
conscripts from the rural districts is always superior to that
of the conscripts of the urban districts.' "

Some Western criticism of Japanese agriculture cannot
be overlooked.'" Criticism is naturally invited by (1)

1 See Appendix LXXII. a See Appendix LXXIII.

3 See Appendi-x LXXIV.

* Between 1909 and 1918 the average area of holdings rose from 1'03
to 1-09 oho or from 2-52 to 2-67 acres or 1-02 to 1-08 hectares.

' There were in 1919 some 13,000 co-operative societies of all sorts. The
number increases about 500 a year.

• For rise in production per tan, see Appendix LXXV.

' See Appendix LXXVI. » See Appendix LXXVII.

' See Appendix LXXVIII.

'" See, for example, C. V. Sale in the Transactions oj the Society of Arts,
1907, and J. M, MoCaleb in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of
Japan, 1916.

ANSWERS TO SOME CRITICS 365

Japanese devotion to what is in Western eyes an exotic
crop — but owing to exceptional water supplies, favourable
climatic conditions and acquired skill in cultivation, the
best crop for all but the extreme north-east of Japan ' ; (2)
the small portions in which much of that crop is grown —
of necessity ; (3) the primitive implements — not ill-adapted,
however, to a primitive cultural system; (4) the non-
utihsation of animal or mechanical power in a large part of
the country — due as much to physical conditions as to lack
of cheap capital ; (5) what is spoken of as " the never-
ending toil" — against which must be set the figures I have
quoted showing the number of farmers who do not work
on an average more than 4 or 5 days a week ; and (6) the
moderate total production compared with the number of
producers — which must be considered in reference to the
object of Japanese agriculture and in relation to a lower
standard of living. Japanese agriculture, as we have seen,
has shortcomings, many of which are being steadily met ;
but with all its shortcomings it does succeed in providing,
for a vast population per square ri, subsistence in conditions
which are in the main endurable and might be easily made
better.

Paddy adjustment has clearly shown that paddies
above the average size are more economically worked
than small ones, but these adjusted paddies are on
the plains and a large proportion of Japanese paddies
have had to be made on uneven or hilly ground where
physical conditions make it impossible for these rice
fields to be anything else than small and irregular.
Japanese agriculture is what it is and must largely
remain what it is because Japan is geologically and
cUmatically what it is, and because the social develop-
ment of a large part of Japan is what it is. Com-
parisons with rice culture in Texas, California and Italy
are usually made in forgetfulness of the fact that the rice
fields there are generally on level fertile areas, in America
sometimes on virgin soil. In Japan rice culture extends to
poor unfavourable land because the people want to have

' For the question, la rice the right crop for Japan ? see Appendix
LXXIX.

366 THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

rice everywhere.' The Japanese have cultivated the same
paddies for centuries, Some American rice land is thrown
out of cultivation after a few years. In fertile localities the
Japanese get twice the average crop. It must also be
remembered that Japanese paddies often produce two crops,
a crop of rice and an after-crop. Japanese technicians are
well acquainted with Texan, Californian and Italian rice
culture, and Japanese have tried rice production both in
California and Texas.

" They talk of Texan and Italian rice culture," said one
man who had been abroad on a mission of agricultural
investigation, " but I found the comparative cost of rice
production greater in Texas than in Japan. Some
Japanese farmers who went to Texas were overcome by
weeds because of dear labour. In Italian paddies, also,
I saw many more weeds than in ours. It is rational,
of coiu-se, for Americans and Italians to use improved
machinery, for they have expensive labour conditions, but
we have cheap labour. The Texans have large paddies
because their land is cheap, but ours is dear. In these big
paddies the water cannot be kept at two or three inches, as
with us. It is necessarily five inches or so, too deep, and
the soil temperatm-e falls and they lose on the crops what
they gain by the use of machinery. Further, it must be
remembered that we are not producing our rice for export.
It is a special kind for ourselves, which we like " ; but
foreigners would just as soon have any other sort. We
have no call, therefore, to develop our rice culture in the
same degree as our sericulture, which rests mainly on a
valuable oversea trade."

" On this general question of improvement of implements
and methods," said another member of our company, " we

' Dr. Yahagi in an address delivered in Italy pointed out to his audience
that Japan had 15 times as large an area under rice as Italy and that,
while the Italian harvest ranged between 42 and 83 hectolitres per hectare,
the Japanese ranged between 66 and 130. The area under rice in the
United States in 1920 was 1,337,000 acres and the yield 53,710,000 bushels.
The area under rice has steadily increased since 1913, when it was only
25,744,000 bushels.

2 A well-informed Japanese who read this Chapter doubted the ability
of his countrymen to distinguish between native and Korean, Californian
pr Texem rice. Saigon is another matter. See Appendix XXIV,

TOOLS AND MACHINERY

867

must use machinery and combine farming management
when industrial progress drives us to it ; but why try to
do it before we are compelled ? Concerning horses, the diffi-
culty which some farmers have in using them is the difficulty
of feeding them economically. Concerning cereals, our
consumption is not less than that of Germany, but Germany
imports more than twice the cereals we do, so there would
seem to be something to be said for our system."

" Some revolutionising of Japanese farming is necessary,
in combined threshing, for instance," the expert who had
opened our discussion said. " This combined threshing
is now seen in several districts, and combined threshing will
be extended. But there
is the objection to the
threshing machine that
it breaks the straw and
thus spoils it for farmers'
secondary industries. It
should not be impossible
to invent some way of
avoiding this, but the
threshing machine is also
too heavy for narrow
roads between paddies.
It is difficult to deliver
the crops to the machine
in sufficient bulk. Neces-
sity may show us ways, but small threshing machines
are not so economical. Of course we must have much
more co-operative buying of rural requirements, and
certainly there is room in some places for the Western scythe
made smaller, but our people, as you have seen, are
dexterous with their extremely sharp, short sickle, and
fodder is often cut on rather difficult slopes, from which
it is not easy to descend loaded, with a scythe. Some
foreigners who speak so positively about machinery for
paddies, and for, I suppose, the sloping uplands to which
our arable farming is relegated, do not really grasp the
physical conditions of our agriculture. And they are
always forgetting the warm dankness of our cUmate.

Cutting Grass

368 THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

They forget, too, that implements for hand use are more
efficient than machinery, and, if labour be cheap, more
economical. They forget above all that we are of
necessity a small- holdings country."

Is it such a bad thing to be a small-holdings country ?
Does the rural life of countries which are pre-eminently
small-holding, like Denmark and Holland, compare so
unfavourably with that of England ? I wonder how
much money has been sunk — most of it lost — duHng the
past quarter of a century in attempts to increase small
holdings in England.

" Because we have much remote, wild, uncultivated
land," the speaker I have interrupted continued, " that is
not to say that most of it, often at a high elevation, or
sloping, or poor in quality, as well as remote, can be profit-
ably broken up for paddies. Much of this land can be and
ought to be utilised in one fashion or another, but we have
found some experiments in this direction unprofitable,
even when rice was dear. But it may be said. Why break
up this wild land into paddies ? Why not have nice grassy
slopes for cattle as in Switzerland ? But our experts have
tried in vain to get grass established. The heavy rains
and the heat enable the bamboo grass to overcome the new
fodder grass we have sown. The first year the fodder grass
grows nicely, but the second year the bamboo grass con-
quers. In Hokkaido and Saghalien we are conquering
bamboo grass with fodder grass. The advice to go in
largely for fruit ignores the fact of our steamy damp
climate, which encourages sappy growth, disease and
those insects which are so numerous in Japan. We
cannot do much more than grow for home consumption."

" The advice to draw the cultivation of our small farms
under group control has not always been profitable when
followed by landlords," one who had not yet spoken
remarked. " They have not always made more when they
farmed themselves than when they let their land. All the
world over, land workers do better for themselves than for
others. Proposals further to capitalise farming which, with
a rural exodus already going on, would have the effect of
driving people off the land who are employed on it healthily

THE TRUTH ABOUT INDUSTRIALISATION 869

and with benefit to the social organism, do not seem to offer
a more satisfactory situation for Japan. No country has
shown itself less afraid of business combination than Japan,
and the world owes as much to industry as to agriculture,
and I am not in the least afraid of machinery and capital ;
but production is not our final aim. Production is to serve
us ; we are not to serve production. If people can live in
self-respect on the land they are better off in many ways
than if they are engaged in industry in some of its modern
developments."

" The world is also better off," my interpreter in his notes
records me as saying when I was pressed to state my
opinion. " The day will come when the uselessness and
waste of a certain proportion of industry and commerce
will be realised, when the saving power of an export and
import trade in unnecessary things will be questioned and
when the cultivator of the ground will be restored to the
place in social precedence he held in Old Japan. With him
will rank the other real producers in art, literature and
science, industry and commerce. The industrialisation of
the West and its capitalistic system have not been so
perfectly successful in their social results for it to be certain
that Japan should be hurried more quickly in the industrial
and capitalistic direction than she is travelling already.' If
she takes time over her development, the final results may
be better for her and for the world. I have not noticed
that Japanese rural people who have departed from a simple
way of life through the acquirement of many farms or the
receipt of factory dividends have become worthier. On
the question of the alleged over-population of rural Japan,
one Japanese investigator has suggested to me that as many

• " Some of our statesmen," notes a Japanese reader of this Chapter,
" are carried away by ideas of an industrial El Dorado." Such men have
no understanding of the relation of rural Japan to the national welfare.
They are as blind guides as the Japanese who, caught by the glamour of
the West, threw away the artistic treasures of their forefathers and pulled
down beautiful temples and yaahiki. Japan has much to gain from i*
wise and just indtistrial system, but not a little of the present industrialisa-
tion is an exploitation of cheap labour, a destruction of craftsmanship and
social obligation, and an attempt to cut out the foreigner by the production
of rubbish.

370 THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

as 20 per cent, could be advantageously spared from
agricultural labour. But he was not himself an agriculturist
or an ex-agriculturist. He was not even a rural resident.
Further, he conceived his 20 per cent, as entering rural
rather than urban industry.

" A great deal of afforestation and better use of a
large proportion of forest land, much more co-operation
for borrowing and buying, improved implements where
improved implements can be profitably used, animal
and mechanical power where they can be employed to
advantage, paddy adjustment to the limit of the practical,
more intelligent manuring, a wider use of better seeds,'
the bringing in of new land which is capable of yielding
a profit when an adequate expenditure is made upon
it, a mental and physical education which is ever im-
proving— all these, joined to better ways of life generally,
are obvious avenues of improvement, in Northern Japan
particularly, not to speak of Hokkaido.' But it is not
so much the details of improvement that seem urgently
to need attention. It is the general principles. I have
been assured again and again by prefectural governors and
agricultural experts — and in talking to a foreigner they
would hardly be likely to exaggerate — that considered
plans for the prevention of disastrous floods, for the
breaking up of new land, for the provision of loans and for
the development of public intelligence and well-being were
hindered in their areas by lack of money alone. The
degree to which rural improvements, with which the best
interests of Japan now and in the future are bound up, may
have been arrested and may still be arrested by erroneous
conceptions of national progress and of the ends to which
public energy and public funds ' may be wisely devoted is

1 The chairman of Rothamsted declares as I write that the standard
of English farming could be raised 60 per cent. Hall and Voelcker have
estimated that 20 million tons of farmyard manure made in the United
Kingdom is wasted through avoidable causes.

s For a discussion of the question of inner colonisation versus foreign
expansion, see Appendix LXXX.

' For figures bearing on the relative importance of agriculture, commerce
and industry, see Appendix LXXXI. For armaments, see Appendix
XXXIII.

THE TWO PATRIOTISMS 871

a matter for patriotic reflection.' No impression I have
gained in Japan is sharper than an impression of ardent
patriotism. For good or ill, patriotism isjhe^outstandinjgi
3a^^ese"virtuer What some patriots here and elsewhere
do not seem to realise, however, is what a quiet, homely,
everyday thing true patriotism is. The Japanese, wTOTso"
iMn^riEalents^b niaiiy n fortuitous advantages,

and with opportunities, such as no other nation has enjoyed,
of being able to profit by the social, economic and inter-
national experience of States that have bought their experi-
ence dearly and havejnucKjEo^ riie, caiinoOairly expeiet to
We "IigKfcTy judged by contemporaries or by history. If the
course taken by Japan towards national greatness is at
times uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of
many will-o'-the-wisps. There can be one basis only for
the enlightened judgment of the world on the Japanese
people : the degree to which they are able to distinguish
the true from the mediocre and the resolution and common-
sense with which they take their own way."

" Our rural problems," a sober-minded young professor
added, after one of those pauses which are usual in conversa-
tions in Japan, " is not a technical problem, not even an
economic problem. It is, as you have realised, a socio-
logical problem. It is bound up with the mental attitude
of our people — and with the mental attitude of the
whole world."

'■ There are meuiy Britons who now reflect that millions which have gone
into Mesopotamia might have been better spent by the Ministries of
Health and Education.

The blessing of her sun-warmed days ;

Her sea-spun cloak of wet ;
Her pointing valleys, veiled in haze,

Where field and wood have met ;
When we have gone our differing ways

These we shall not forget.

L. T., in The New East.

372

APPENDICES

The sermon was bad enough, but the appendix was abominable.—
Mb. Bowdleb.

THE INCOME OF A MINISTER OF STATE FROM THE
LAND [I]. The speaker began by inheriting 3 cho (7 J acres).
He farmed a cho of rice field and about a third of a cho of dry
land. With rent from the part he let, with gains from the part
he farmed and with interest on 2,000 yen spare capital, he had
at end of the year a balance of 370 yen. With the money gained
from year to year more and more land was bought. At the
time of his talk with me he owned 8 cho. His net income, after
deducting cost of living, was 1,200 yen (including 500 yen from
the land that was let). In the future, when he farmed 7 cho
{\5\ acres), he believed that his balance would be 4,500 yen,
which is the salary of a Governor ! Or was, until the rise in
prices when Governors' salaries were raised about another
1,000 yen, with an additional allowance of from 600 to 400 yen
in the case of some prefectures. See also Appendix III.

" GETA " [II]. The geta is a flat piece of hard wood, about
the length of the foot but a little wider, with two stumpy pieces
fastened transversely below it. The foot maintains an un-
certain and, in the case of a novice whose big toe has not been
accustomed to separation from its fellows, a painful hold by
means of a toe strap of thick rope or cotton. To persons
unused from childhood to the special toe grip and scuffle of the
geta, it seems odd to associate with this difficult clattering foot-
gear the idea of " luxury." But no pains are spared by the
geta makers in choosing fine woods and pretty cords.

BUDGETS OF LARGE PROPERTY OWNERS [III].
Two landlords, A and B, kindly allowed me to look into their
budgets :

yen

80 cho of rural land

320,000

20 cho of rural land

60,000

20,000 taubo of city land .

130,000

Negotiable instruments .

150,000

Dwelling and furniture .

160,000

Total property

810,000

373

374 APPENDICES

EXPENDITTJBE OP PaST YeAE

yen

House 2,100

Food and drink 1,380

aothing 1,000

Social intercourse ... 1,600

Public benefit .... 800

Miscellaneous ....... 1,000

Taxes 5.000

12,750

owns 62 chd 4 tan and receives in rent 623 kohu 7 to. Members of family,
11 ; servants, 8.

Expenditure of Past Yeab

yen

House ......... 619

Food and drink (18 sen each per day for members of

family ;• 13 sen each for servants) . . 1,102

Fuel. . . . 166

Light . ... . . 36

Caothing 770

Education (3 middle-school boya at 20 yen per month ;

3 primary-school boys and girls at 2 yen) . . . 312

Social intercourse . . . . . . . 120

Amusements (journey, 100 yen; summer trip, 231;

others, 50) 381

Miscellaneous (servants, 480 yen ; medicine, 160' ; other

things, 150) 780

Donations ........ 300

Taxes 3,976

8,461

THE " BENJO " [IV]. I never noticed a case in which earth
was thrown into the domestic closet tub according to Dr.
Poore's system. I have come across attempts to use deo-
dorisers, but the application of a germicide is inhibited because
of the injury which would be caused to the crops. Farmers
are chary about removing night soil which has been treated even
with a deodoriser. I ventured to suggest more than once that
Japanese science should be equal to evolving a deodoriser to
which the farmer, who in Japan seems to be so easily directed,
could have no objection. The drawback to using Dr. Poore's
system is that the added earth would greatly increase the weight
of the substance to be removed. There would be the same
objection to the use of hibachi ash (charcoal ash), but there is
not enough produced to have any sensible effect. The truth
is that there is no lively interest in the question of getting rid

APPENDICES 875

of the stink for everyone has become accustomed to it. The
odour from the benjo — the politer word is habakari — which is
always indoors, though at the end of the engawa (verandah),
often penetrates the house. {Engawa [edge or border] is the
passage which faces to the open ; roka is a passage inside a house
between two rooms or sometimes a bridgelike passage in the
open, connecting two separate buildings or parts of a house.)
Emptying day is particularly trying. This much must be said,
however, that the farmers' tubs are washed, scrubbed and
sunned after every journey and have close-fitting lids. And
primitive though the benjo is, it is scrupulously clean. Also, if
it is always more or less smelly, it is contrived on sound
hygienic principles. There is no seat requiring an unnatural
position. The user squats over an opening in the floor about
2 ft. long by 6 ins. wide. This opening is encased by a simple
porcelain fitting with a hood at the end facing the user. The
top of the tub is some distance below the floor. In peasants'
houses there is no porcelain fitting. Manure is so valuable
in Japan that farmers whose land adjoins the road often build
a benjo for the use of passers-by. Although the traveller in
Japan has much to endure from the unpleasant odour due to the
thrifty utilisation of excreta, the Japanese deserve credit for
the fact that their countryside is never fouled in the disgusting
fashion which proves many of our rural folk to be behind the
primitive standard of civilisation set up in Deuteronomy
(chap, xxiii. 13). The Western rural sociologist is not inclined
to criticise the sanitary methods of Japan. He is too conscious
of the neglect in the West to study thoroughly the grave question
of sewage disposal in relation to the needs of our crops and the
cost of nitrogenous fertilisers. See also Appendix XX.

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS [V]. In Mr. Yamasaki's
school there was dormitory accommodation for 200 youths,
some 40 lived in teachers' houses, another 15 were in lodgings,
and 45 came daily from their parents' homes. Lads were
admitted from 14 to 16 and the course was for 3 years. The
students worked 30 hours weekly indoors and the rest of their
time outside. Upper and lower grade agricultural schools
number 280 with 23,000 students. In addition there are
7,908 agricultural continuation schools with more than 430,000
pupils. The ratio of illiteracy in Japan for men of conscription
age (that is, excluding old people and young people), which
had been over 5 per cent, up to 1911, was reported to be only
2 per cent, in 1917.

376

APPENDICES

CRIME [VI]. In 1916 the chief offences in Japan were :

Dealt with at police

Wilful injury

2,032

station

445,502

Murder

1,886

Gambling and lotteries

81,649

Abortion

1,252

Larceny

81,063

Abduction .

907

Fraud and usurpation

49,772

Rioting

813

Assaults

19,022

Official disgrace

481

Robbery

10,383

Military and naval

387

Arson .

9,533

Desertion

315

Accidental assaults

3,277

Forgery

307

Obscenity

2,796

Coining

206

PROSTITUTES [VII]. The chief of police was good enough
to let me have a copy of the form to be filled up by girls desiring
to enter the houses in the prefecture. It is under nine heads :
1. The reason for adopting the profession. 2. Age. 3. Per-
mission of head of household. If permission is not forthcoming,
reason why. 4. If a minor, proof of permission. 5. House
at which the girl is going to "work." 6. Home address. 7.
Former means of getting a living. 8. Whether prostitute
before. If so, particulars. 9. Other details.

When I was in Japan there were reputed to be about 60,000
joro (prostitutes), about half that number of geisha and about
35,000 " waitresses."

PHILANTHROPIC AGENCIES [VIII]. In 1917 the num-
ber of paupers, tramps and foundlings relieved by the State
did not exceed 10,000. The number of institutions was 780
(of which 40 were run by foreigners), with the expenditure of
about 5\ million yen.

CHANGES IN RURAL STATUS [IX]. It seemed that
during 47 years 18 tenants had become peasant proprietors,
14 peasant proprietors had become landowners (that is men who
make their living by letting land rather than by working it),
8 tenants had stepped straightway into the position of land-
owners, 7 landowners had fallen to the grade of peasant
proprietors and 7 more to that of tenants, while 114 householders
had changed their callings or had gone to Hokkaido.

HOURS OF WORK PER DAY [X]. One of these villages
showed that during January and February it worked 6 hours,
during March and April 8 hours, from May to August \2\ hours,
during September and October 9J hours, and during November
and December 9 hours. There was a further record of labour
at night. In January and February it worked from 6.80 p.m.
to 10 p.m., during March and April and September and October

APPENDICES

877

from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and in November and December from
7 p.m. to 10 p.m. As in the period from May to August
inclusive the day working hours were from 5 a.m. to 7.80 p.m.,
there then was no night labour.

DILIGENT PEOPLE AND OTHERS [XI]. The adults of
the village were classified as follows : Diligent people, men 294,
women 260 ; average workers, men 270, women 286 ; other
people, men 242, women 191. One supposes that, in considering
the women's activities, all that was estimated was the number
of hours spent in agricultural work or in remimerative employ-
ment in the evening.

FARM AREAS AND DAYS WORKED IN THE YEAR
[XII]. The information concerned three typical peasant
proprietors. A, B and C, living in the same county. The
areas of their land are given in tan :

Where fanning

P»ddy

Dry

Homestead

Bented

Children

Parents

A
B
C

In hills .
On plain .
Near town

6-6

2-6
4

•5

2 paddy

3
3
3

2
2

Next we are told the number of days that not only A, B
and C but their wives and their parents worked and did not
work during the year :

Husbands

Wives

Fathers

Mothers

■ A
B

■ A
B
C

A
B
C

Agrioaltore

Domestic
Work

National

Holidays

and Festirals

Illneaa

254
239
231

28
37
49

25
25
19

6
2

239
150
141

54
128
174

—

144
205

47
69

85
40

324

220

6
23

—

— .

Bemaining
Days

52
64
64

64
61
41

72
61

20
41

It will be seen that men only were ill ! [See next page.]

378 APPENDICES

For average, of hours worked elsewhere, see page 232 and
page 237.

FARMERS' EARNINGS AND SPENDINGS [XIII]. If
the reader should feel that the following details are lacking
in comprehensiveness or definiteness, he should understand that
reports of a national and authoritative character on the
economic condition of the farmer were not available. There
existed certain reports of the Ministry of Agriculture, but they
were subjected to criticism. The National Agricultural
Association had set on foot an elaborate enquiry as to the
condition of the " middle farmer," but it was suggested that too
much reliance was placed on arithmetical calculations and
too little on known facts. I have had to rely, therefore, on
official and private investigations made in various prefectures
and villages, and I give a selection for what they are worth.
Of the general condition of the agricultural population the reader
is offered the impressions recorded in my different Chapters.

Incomes and Expenditures of Peasant Pkopeietors. —
The incomes and expenditures of the three households referred
to in Appendix XII were :

Income

Expenditure

Balance in hanil

yen

A .

477

449

B .

915

838

C .

971

703

Household Expenditures. — The household expenditures
of the three families were, in yen :

yen

Food

192-76

216-64

189-57

House .

2-32

2-24

1-20

Clothes

18-72

15-16

10-08

Fuel .

12-72

13-53

2100

Tools and furniture

10-97

160-18

1-66

Social intercourse .

9-58

—

6-05

Education .

1-56

4-15

Amusement .

3-30

2-03

18-00

Unforeseen .

7-85

13-72

22-33

Miscellaneous

6-43

7-71

11-15

266-21

431-21

280-19

APPENDICES 879

It will be observed that the expenditure of B under the
heading of furniture, 160 yen, is out of all proportion with the
expenditures of A and C, 10 yen and 1 yen respectively. This
is due to the fact that B had to provide a bride's chest for a
daughter.

A balance sheet given me by a peasant proprietor in Aichi
(5 tan of two-crop paddy and 5 tan of upland) showed a balance
in hand of 27 yen.

An agricultural expert said to me, " The peasant proprietors
are the backbone of the country, but the condition of the back-
bone is not good. The peasant proprietors can make ends meet
only by secondary employments." The expert showed me aver-
age figures for 18 farmers for 1891, 1900 and 1909. The average
land of these men was a little over a cho of paddy and 5 tan of
upland and some woodland. They had spent 39, 63 and 86
yen on artificial manures as against 100, 153 and 204 yen on
food. The balance at the end of the year for the three years
respectively was 27, 40 and 29 yen. " The figures reflect the
general condition," I was told.

Incomes and Expenditures of Tenants. — I may also note
the circumstances of the largest and of the smallest tenant in an
Aichi village I visited. The largest tenant family showed a
balance in hand, 93 yen ; the smallest tenant, 23 yen.

The accounts of 16 tenants for 1891 showed an average sum of
3 yen in hand at the end of the year, for 1900 a loss of 5 yen and
for 1909 a gain of 1 yen. These men had an average of 9 tan
of paddy and 2 tan of upland. The man who gave me the data
said that in the north-east of Japan " the condition of the
tenants is miserable — eating almost cattle food." The only
bright spot for tenants was that, as compared with peasant
proprietors, they were free to change their holdings and even
their business.

Incomes of Tenants and Peasant Proprietors (Shid-
zuoka). — One tenant, who pays 159 yen in rent and taxes, shows
a total income of 374 yen and an expenditure of 538 yen, with a
net loss of 164 yen. " Farmers of this class," notes the local
expert on the memorandum he gave me, " are becoming poorer
every year." This tenant spent 2 yen on medicine and 5 yen
on tobacco. (" Nothing else for enjoyment," pencils the
expert.) In addition to parents, a man, a woman and a girl
of the family worked. Food cost 321 yen (cost of fish and
meat, 4J yen) and clothing 34 yen.

380 APPENDICES

In a " model village," where " the farmers are always diligent,"
a small tenant's income was 508 yen and expenditure 527 yen ;
loss, 19 yen. Clothes cost 95 yen and food 190 yen. (Cost of
fish and meat, 4f yen.) There was an expenditure on medicine
of IJ yen and on tobacco and saki ("only enjoyment")
10 yen.

Twenty per cent, of the farmers, I was told, " lead a middle-
class life and occupy a somewhat rational area of land."
The budgets of ten of these men, who own their own land, show a
balance of 85 yen. " If they were tenants they would not be in
such a good condition." " We think the farmer ought to have
2 cho."

Budgets of Farmers on the Land of the Homma Clan,
Yamagata (page 186). — ^A tenant had 3 cho of paddy and a small
piece of vegetable land. There lived with him his wife, two
sons and the widow and child of the eldest son. After paying
his rent he had 30 koku of rice left. The cost of production and
taxes, 100 yen or a little more, had to come out of that. This
tenant had a debt of 250 yen.

A sturdy wagoner with a sturdy horse lived with his wife and
three children and his old mother. He hired 1 cho for 28
koku of rice and his crop was 40 koku. He spent 30 yen on
manure and 4 yen went in taxes.

A middle-grade farmer owned a house and a little more than
1 cho and rented 3 chd of paddy and a patch for vegetables.
His rent was about 88 koku. He spent 100 yen on manure
and 128 yen for taxes, temple dues and regulation of the paddy.
He employed at 2j koku a man who lived with the family, also
temporary labour for 48 days. His crop might be 100 koku
or more. He had no debt.

A third man was above the middle grade of farmer. His
taxes were 240 yen and his manure bill 180 yen. His payment
for paddy-field regulation, to continue for ten years, was 60 yen.
He had three labourers and he also hired extra labour for 100
days. He had three unmarried sons of 40, 29 and 25. There
were 260 yen of pensions in respect of the war service of one
son and the death of another.

Income of Peasant Proprietors (Hokkaido). — ^The follow-
ing statistics for the whole of Hokkaido are based on the
experience of peasant proprietors. The 2^-cho men are rice

APPENDICES 381

farmers — ^rice farming means farming with rice as the principal
crop. The 5-chd men are engaged in mixed farming :

Fanner's
Area

Income

from

Farming

Income

from Other

Work

Total

Cost of
Cultivation

Cost of
Living

Total
Outlay

Balance.

2ichd
5 cho

yen
366
441

yen
43
33

yen
409

474

yen
107
119

yen
276
301

382
423

yen
27
52

It will be seen that mixed farming is the more profitable.

Income of Tenants (Hokkaido). — Professor Takaoka was
kind enough to give me the following smnmaries of balance
sheets of tenants of college lands in different parts of Hokkaido
in 1915. (In all cases the accounts have been debited with
wages for the farmer's family.)

Five cho. Income, 447 yen ; net return, 37 yen. (Rye,
wheat, oats, com, soy, potatoes, grass, flax, buckwheat and
rape. One horse and a few hens.)

Five cho. Income, 763 yen ; net return, 58 yen. (Rye,
wheat, oats, rape, soy, potatoes, corn, grass, flax and onions.
Three cows, one horse.)

Ten cho. Income, 1,015 yen ; net return, 122 yen. (Same
crops with two cows and one horse and some hired labour.)

Five cho (peppermint on 3 cho). Income, 882 yen ; net return,
93 yen.

Three cho. Income, 1,195 yen ; net return, 332 yen. (Vege-
table farming. 206 yen paid for labour.)

Thirty cho. Income, 1,979 yen ; net return, 61 yen. (Mixed
farming ; 632 yen paid for labour.)

Model 5-ch6 farm without rice. Made 604 yen, and 107 yen
net return, farm capital being 1,487 yen. (208 yen allowed for
labour, interest 128 yen, amortisation 27 yen, and taxes 13 yen.)

Milk farmer, 12 cho and 90 cattle. Income, 12,280 yen;
net return q/'3,641 yen.

2,120 cho (1,235 forest, 402 pasture, 110 artificial grass and
42 crops; 111 cattle). Income, 66,205 yen; net return, 1,011
yen. (Milk and meat farming.)

Average income and expenditure of 200 tenants of University
land whose budgets Professor Morimoto (see Chapter XXXIV)
investigated :

382

APPENDICES

yea

Crops 451-66

Wages earned ........ 61-33

Horses 20-09

Poultry and eggs . . . . . . • '96

Pigs -85

Manure (animal, 35 fcwon ; human, 14 fcofcu) . . 24-60

Other income ........ 29-64

689-03

Cultivation, etc.
Cost of living

Proat

yen
206-32
303-33

509-65
79-38

The returns of capital yielded the following averages ;

Tenant right in respect of 6-16 chd

Buildings (32-2 taubo)

Clothing .

Horse (average 1-23)

Furniture

Implements

Poultry (average 2-58)

Pigs (average -12)

yen

750-82

196-95

162-82

108-48

58-47

51-23

1-15

•87

Total 1,329-79

VALUE OF NEW PADDY [XIV]. More delicious rice could
be got, I was told, from well-fertilised barren land than from
naturally fertile land. The first year the new paddy yielded
per tan an average of 1-2 koku, the second 1-6, the third 2,
and this fourth year the yield would have been 2-3 had it not
been for damage by storm.

AREAS AND CROPS OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF RICE
[XV]. In 1919 there was grown of paddy rice 2,984,750 chd
(2,729,639 ordinary, 255,111 glutinous) and of upland rice
141,365 cho. Total, 3,126,115 cho. The yield (husked, un-
cleaned) was of paddy 61,343,403 koku (ordinary, 56,438,005 ;
glutinous, 4,905,898) ; of upland, 1,839,312. Total, 63,182,715
koku; value, 2,352,145,519 yen.

In 1877 the area is reputed to have been 1,940,000 cho with
a yield of 24,450,000 koku and in 1882 2,580,000 cho with a
yield of 80,692,000 koku. The average of the five years 1910-14,
was 3,033,000 cho with a yield of 57,006,000 koku ; of the five
years 1915-19, 3,081,867 cho with a yield of 94,817,431 koku.

APPENDICES

888

In a prefecture in south-western Japan I found that 2 koku 5 to
(or 2^ koku, there being 10 to in a koku) per tan was common
and that from 3 koku to 8 koku 5 <o was reached. " A good yield
for 1 tan," says an eminent authority, " is 3 koku, or on the best
fields even 4 koku." The average yield in koku per tan for
the whole country has been (paddy-field rice only) : 1882, 1-19
1894-8, 1-38 ; 1899-1908, 1-44 ; 1904-8, 1-57 ; 1909-13, 1-63
1914-18, 1-86; 1919, 1-99; 1920, 2-05 (ordinary, 2-06
glutinous, 1-92). Upland rice in 1920, 1-80 as against 1-02 in
1909. All these figures are for husked, uncleaned rice,

BARLEY AND WHEAT CROPS [XVI]. The following
table (average of five years, 1913-17) shows the yields per tan
of the two sorts of barley and of wheat and the average yield
all three together in comparison with the rice yield (all quantities
husked) :

Barley

Naked barley
Wheat .

go
1,672
1,172
1.073

All three together
Rice

go
1,307
1,808

Naked barley is grown as an upland crop, as are ordinary
barley and wheat ; but it is more largely grown as a second crop in
paddies than either barley or wheat. The barleys are chiefly
used for human food with or without rice. Wheat is eaten in
macaroni, sweetstuffs and bread. It is also used in con-
siderable quantities in the manufacture of soy, the chief in-
gredient of which is beans. There was imported in the year
1920 wheat to the value of 28^ million yen, and flour to the
value of 3J million yen. Macaroni is largely made of buck-
wheat as well as of wheat. The other grain crop is millet,
which is eaten by the poorest farmers. In 1918, as against
60 million koku of rice, there were grown 5 million koku of
beans and peas. The crops of barley were 17 million, of wheat
6 million, of millet 3J million, and of buckwheat | million.
More than a million kwan of sweet potatoes were produced and
nearly half a million of " Irish " potatoes. (The figures for
barley and wheat are for 1919.)

COST AND PRICE OF RICE [XVII]. The annual figures
(from Aichi) for the years 1894 to 1915 (page 384) show the cost
of producing a tan of rice, that is the summer crop. The
amounts per tan are calculated on the basis of the expenses of a
tenant who is cropping 8 tan. The totals for the winter crop

Total Net
Income

from both
Crops.

rH eq OS cq CO OS CO 00 us us i-< t* eo wi -^ i-t oo o --h
,-1 ffi to i> M oio >o 00 OS t-eq ■* 0(N osow m as
0(»i>(N»dsmrt«tbio>oebo<NAoobMOmob
S -< (N fh ,-( rt rf rt rt pH eci M N (N eq <N COIN -^

Net Income

from "Winter

Crop

(?Barler)

r-f 00 00 oq o cq cq t> ^ co t^ os o os os r-i os co cq •* t*
5-S«eqmiMoq 00-71 0 <o i> to t- ■* -* ■* i> to 10 cp
««c«5ib>oei-*cb-*totbtoiocooA»<cieoNrHds

^H ^H ^"i ^*H ^H ^^

Days of

LKbour on

Summer

Orop of

Bice

loioioioio 10 ip 10 10
"^eqcqeqcqeqeqifqeqeqNcqeqSeqCTiNeqeqeqiNiN

Net Income
from

Orop of
Rice (yen)

o>o-Hoei5t--*i-iasioosioos-*tDiOi-iosoot>iOT(i
tD-*coioi>eoopt;-<»ocoo-*op«c^ioiocpc»3t>(M

i>tb-*t>i>i>dbt^ob6dsd56>i'iosob-^ost-Abb

ill

.HtoooeoOrto>Or-iosr-no>-<iO'*'*i>coooeoi>
©q©q»o^*^'-<'*coioi>^w3toapiotDMr-ttoco»oto
Meq(Ncoeo-*-^-*eoe«5coiN'*'^ib-*ioiocbi>tbcei

Taxes and
Amortisation
ol Imple-
ments (sen)

i-irteqcomOrHeqoooscototDMoqosOooioosooeq
eqeq(Meqeqeocoecc<5-*>o-<tiio'*-*osoot>t>i>t~oo

■^osoioo-H T'^'P'T' ■* rt i> 10 1* OS 10 00 00
«eqiNeKic!sc»5-*-*c<5coiNiN'*-*ioe!5-*-*>o5b>o>b

Gross

Income

inclading

Straw and

OhalE, not

usnally sold

(yen)

^ r-t OS CO CO 00 ■* to 0 W3 O OS OS O OS b- Oq 00 t^ OS i-H

00 i> 00 to ri Td eq CI ■* 00 to o to op co co i> ■* to eq os

dsa)to6rt'HcoiNff5cotoAiototb'*codstb-*cib-*

i-HCqp— ip-ii— ti-4(— tt-Hi— II— ii-HpHi-Hi-Hp-ieqoqi-Hi— 1

Market
Price

per ioiM
(yen)

cDasi>coNOFHcoasc>o*q»oososeoosi>-<j<coot*

t^ob<»r--*iNrtONiNesico>btOTi<.^-#tb'HO«N)iM

III!

cococoooono-*ototo-*t-tooortt-eqeqeq-HQoto
(N.-^^OQOcoI>-Hr-^coo(^^l>osol^^lc^^o<^^oco■*co

(N(Nrtrt(Nrt(N(NA(N(N'Hfi,i(NIN(NOSlc!)«(NIN

Tjiwtot^ooo)0^oqcoTj<mcot^ooosO'-t(Mco-^io
osasosososo30000000ooop-H--ii-*i-ir-t^
ooooooooooooosososososososososososososososos

384

APPENDICES 385

are also given. The figures which appear on the opposite page
were described to me by the farmer concerned as " compiled
on the basis of investigations by the chairman of the village
agricultural association and by its managers and still further
proved and quite trustworthy." It will be seen that the value
of the winter crop is low ; a secondary employment is usually
a better thing for the farmer. In one or two places there is a
sen or so difference in the additions which may have been made
by the transcriber from the Japanese original. The difference in
amounts of rent is due to difference in fields rented and also to
reduction allowed owing to bad crops. The difference in the
income from crops is usually due to destruction by hail or
wind.

In the spring of 1921 the League for the Prevention of Sales
of Rice at a Sacrifice proposed that rice should not be sold under
35 yen per koku. The price passed the figure of 35 yen in July
1918. At the time the League's proposals were made the
Ministry of Agriculture was quoted as stating that the cost of
producing rice " is now 40 yen per koku." The accuracy of the
figures on which the Ministry's estimates are made is frequently
called in question.

CULTIVATED AREA IN JAPAN AND GREAT BRITAIN
[XVIII]. In 1919 there were in Great Britain (England,
Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands)
15,808,000 acres of arable, 15,910,000 of pasture and 13,647,000
of grazing, or a total of 45,365,000 acres out of a total area of
56,990,000 acres. In Japan there were 15,044,202 acres of
paddy and of cultivated upland, 46,958,000 acres of forest and
8,773,000 acres of waste ; total 70,775,000, out of 90,880,000 acres.
The area of the United Kingdom without Ireland is 56,990,080
acres ; that of Japan Proper, 75,988,378 acres. The popula-
tion of the United Kingdom without Ireland (in 1911) was
41,126,000, and of Japan Proper (in 1911) 51,435,000. (See also
Appendix XXX.)

HUMAN LABOUR v. CATTLE POWER fXIX]. The
Department of Agriculture stated in 1921 that " from 200 to
300, sometimes more than 500 days' labour [of one man] are
required to grow a cho of rice." The area of paddy which is
ploughed by horse or cattle power was 61-89 per cent. The
area of upland so cultivated was only 38'97 per cent. The
" average year's work of the ordinary adult farmer " was put at

386

APPENDICES

200 days. The Department estimated an average man's day's
work (10 hours) as follows :

Nature ot Work

Tools used

Output by one
Man per Day

hectare

Tillage of paddy

Kuiua (mattock)

006

»» ft »f

Fumi-guwa (heavy spade)

01—016

Transplanting rice

Hand work

007—01

Weeding

Sickle and weeding tools

Cutting the rice crop

Sickle

01— 0-15

Mowing grass

Sickle (long handle)

0-5

»» »s

Scythe

0-5

But I have never seen a scythe in use in Japan !

MANURE [XX]. The value of the manure used in Japan in
a year has been estimated at about 220 million yen, but for the
three years ending 1916 it averaged 241 millions, as follows :

Produeed or obtained by the Farmer
yen
Compost . . 63,500,000

Human waste . . 64,000,000

Green manure . . 9,600,000

Rice chafE . 6,000,000

Porchased

yen

Bean cake

32,000,000

Mixed

17,000,000

Miscellaneous

16,000,000

Sulphate of ammonia .

15,000,000

Superphosphate

12,000,000

Fish waste

12,000,000

Dr. Sato puts the artificial manure used per tan at a sixth
of that of Belgium and a quarter of that of Great Britain and
Germany. See also Appendix IV. An agricultural expert
once said to me, " Japanese farmer he keep five head of stock,
his own family."

SOWING OF RICE [XXI]. A common seeding time is the
eighty-eighth day of the year according to the old calendar,
say May 1 or 2. Transplanting is very usual at the end of May
or early in June. In Kagawa, Shikoku, I found that rice was
sown at the beginning of May or even at the end of April,
the transplanting being done in mid-June. The harvest was
obtained 10 per cent, about September 10th, 80 per cent, in
October and 60 per cent, about the beginning of November.
The winter crop of naked barley was sown in the first quarter of
December and was harvested late in May or early in June, so
there was just time for the rice planting in mid-June.

In Kochi the first crop is sown about March 16, the seedlings

APPENDICES 887

are put out in mid-May and the harvest is ready about August 10.
The second crop, which has been sown in June, is ready with
its seedlings from August 13 to August 15, and the harvest
arrives about November 1 and 2. The first crop may yield
about 3 koku, the second 1| Jcoku.

A good deal depends in raising a big crop on a good seed bed.
This is got by reducing the quantity of seed used and by
applying manure wisely. Whereas formerly as much as from
5 to 7 go of seed was sown per tsubo, the biggest crops are now
got from 1 go.

The Japanese names of the most widely grown varieties are
Shinriki, Aikoku, Omachi, Chikusei and Sekitori. At an
experiment station I copied the names of the varieties on
exhibition there : Banzai, Patriotism, Japanese Embroidery,
Good-looking, Early Power of God, Bamboo, Small Embroidery,
Power of God, Mutual Virtue, Yellow Bamboo, Late White,
Power of God (glutinous), Silver Rice Cake and Eternal Rice
Field.

There are several thousand cho in the vicinity of Tokyo where,
owing to the low temperature of the marshy soil, the seed is sown
direct in the paddies, not broadcast but at regular intervals and
in thrice or four times the normal quantities.

RATE OF PLANTING [XXII]. I have been told that an
adult who has the seedlings brought to his or her hand can stick
in a thousand an hour. The early varieties may be set in clumps
of seven or eight plants ; middle-growth sorts may contain from
five to six ; the latest kind may include only three or four.
The number of clumps planted may be 42 per tsubo, which, as a
tsubo is nearly four square yards, is about ten per square yard.
The clumps are put in their places by being pushed into the mud.
A straight line is kept by means of a rope. The success of the
crop depends in no small degree on skilful planting.

HOW MUCH RICE DOES A JAPANESE EAT ? [XXIII].
The daily consumption of rice per head, counting young
and old, is nearly 8 go. (A go is roughly a third of a pint.)
A sturdy labourer will consume at least 5 go in a day, and some-
times 7 or even 10 go. The allowance for soldiers is 6 go.
These quantities represent the rice uncooked. In recent years
more and more rice has been eaten by those who formerly ate
barley or mainly barley. And some who once ate a good deal
of millet and hiye are now eating a certain amount of rice.

888

APPENDICES

The average annual consumption per head of the Japanese
population (Korea and Formosa excluded from the calculation)
was: 1888-93, 948 go; 1908-18, 1,037 go; 1918-18, 1,050
go. The averages of 25 years (1888-1912) were : production,
42,756,584 koku ; consumption, 44,410,725 koku; deficit,
1,984,970 koku ; population, 45,140,094 ; per head, 0-980
koku. In 1921 the Department of Agriculture, estimating a
population of 55,960,000 (see Appendix XXX) and an annual
consumption per head of l-l koku per year, put the national
consumption for a year at about 61,550,000 koku. See also
Appendix XXVI.

IMPORTED AND EXPORTED RICE [XXIV]. "Good
rice " is imported from Korea and Formosa. The objection
is to " Rangoon " rice. But most of the imported rice does not
come from Rangoon but from Saigon. The figures for 1919
were in yen : China, 283,011 ; British India, 1,012,979 ;
Kwantung, 15,053,977 ; Siam, 29,367,430 ; French Indo-China,
116,313,525; other countries, 39,918; total, 162,070,840.
The exports in 1919 were in yen : China, 1,354 ; Australia,
6,570 ; Asiatic Russia, 165,463 ; Kwantung, 213,633 ; British
America, 356,600 ; United States, 476,756 ; Hawaii, 3,046,598 ;
other countries, 60,707 — all obviously in the main for Japanese
consumption. The total imports and exports were in koku and
yen over a period of years :

Imporls

Bxports

Tear

Koku

Value (yen)

Soku

Value (yen)

1909

1,325,243

13,585,817

422,613

5,867,290

1910

918,627

8,644,439

429,251

6,900,477

1911

1,719,666

11,721,085

216,198

3,940,541

1912

2,234,437

30,193,481

208,423

4,367,824

1913

3,637,269

48,472,304

204,002

4,372,979

1914

2,022,644

24,823,933

260,738

4,974,108

1915

457,606

4,886,125

662,629

9,676,969

1916

309,158

3,087,616

686,479

11,197,356

1917

664,376

6,513,373

769,129

14,662,546

1918

4,647,168

89,755,678

264,565

8,321,965

1919

4,642,382

162,070,840

95,219

4,327,690

1920

471,083

18,069,194

116,249

5,897,675

The twenty-five years' average (1888-1912) of excess of import
over export was 1,339,498 koku. See also Appendix XXVIII.

APPENDICES 389

INCREASE OF RICE YIELD AND OF POPULATION

fXXV].

1882

1913

Per-
oontigeof
Increase

1918

Per-
centiige ol
Increase"

Population
Rice crop {koku)

36,700,000
30,692,000

63,362,000
60,222,000

45
63

66,851,000
63,893,000

66
76

1 1882-1918. The degree to which the increase in production will be
maintained is of course a matter for discussion. As far as rice is concerned,
it must be borne in mind that there is an increasing consumption per head.

FARMERS' DIET fXXVI]. It is officially stated in 1921
that "the common farm diet consists of a mixture of cooked
rice and barley as the principal food with vegetables and occa-
sionally fish." The barley is what is known as naked barley.
Ordinary barley is eaten in northern Japan, but two-thirds of the
barley eaten elsewhere is the wheat-like naked barley, which
cannot be grown in Fukushima and the north. The husking
of ordinary barley is hard work. The young men do it
during the night when it is cool. They keep on until cock-crow.
Their songs and the sound of their mallets make a memorable
impression as one passes through a village on a moonlight night.
Another substitute for rice beyond millet is hiye (panic grass).
In the south it is regarded as a weed of the paddies, but in the
north many tan are planted with this heavy-yielding small grain.

TAXATION [XXVII]. Before 1906 national taxation was
2-5 per cent, of the legal price of land. In 1900 it was 8-3 per
cent., in 1904 5-5 per cent., in 1911 4-7 per cent, and in 1915
4-5 per cent. But local taxation increased in greater proportion.

FLAVOUR OF RICE AND PRICE FLUCTUATIONS
[XXVIII]. Japanese rice has a fatty flavour which the people
of Japan like. Therefore the native rice commands a higher
price in Japan than Chinese or Indian rice. With the excep-
tion of a small quantity exported to Japanese abroad, Japanese
rice is consumed in Japan. The supply of it and the demand for
it are exclusively a Japanese affair. Naturally, when the crop
fails the price soars, and when there is a superabundant
harvest the price comes down to the level of foreign rice.
Here is the secret of the enormous fluctuations in the price of

890 APPENDICES

Japanese rice with which the authorities have so often en-
deavoured to cope.

The Government granary plan is the third big effort of
authority to manage rice prices. The Okuma Government,
under the administration of which rice went down to 14 yen per
koku, had a Commission to raise prices. The Terauchi Ministry,
at a time when prices rose, touching 55 yen, had a Commission
to bring prices down.

AREA AND CLIMATE [XXIX]. Japan Proper comprises
a main island, three other large islands in sight of the main
island, and archipelagos — 4,000 islets have been counted.
The main island, Honshu, with Shikoku behind it, lies oft the
coast of Korea ; the next largest and northernmost island,
Hokkaido, off the coast of Siberia, and the remaining sizeable
island and the southernmost, Kyushu, off the coast of
China over against the mouth of the Yangtse. The area of
this territory, that is of Japan before the acquirement of
Formosa, Korea, southern Saghalien and part of Manchuria,
is about 142,000 square miles in area, which is that of Great
Britain in possession not of one Wales but of four, or nearly
1 per cent, of the area of Asia. But there are several million
more people in Japan than there are inhabitants of Great
Britain and thrice as many as there are Britons in Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. (See also
Appendix XXX.) Japan, which lies between the latitudes of
Cairo and the Crimea, may be said to consist of mountains, of
which fifty are active volcanoes, with some land, either hilly
or boggy, at the foot of them. It is nowhere more than 200
miles across and in one place is only 50. A note on the ocean
currents which exercise an influence on agriculture will be
found on page 195. The protection afforded to the eastern
prefectures by mountain ranges is obvious. Generally the
summer temperature of Japan is higher and the winter tempera-
ture is lower than is recorded in Europe and America within
the same latitudes.

" The mild climate and abundant rainfall," says the Depart-
ment of Agriculture, " stimulate a luxuriant forest development
throughout the country which in turn provides ample fountain
heads for rivers. The rivers and streams run in all directions,
affording opportunity for irrigation all over the country.
The insular position of the country renders its humidity high
and its rainfall abundant when compared with Continental

APPENDICES

391

countries. The rainy season prevails during the months of June
and July, making this season risky for the harvest of wheat and
bariey; on the other hand it affords a beneficent irrigation
supply to paddy-grown rice, which is the most important crop.
The characteristic feature of the climate in the greater part of
tlie islands is the frequency of storms in the months of August
and September. As the flowers of the rice plant commence
to bloom during the same period, these late summer storms
cause much damage."

The weather in Tokyo in 1918 was as follows :

Feb.

Mar.

Apl.

May

Jane

July

Aug.

Oct.

Nov.

Deo.

Bain and

snow (mm.)
Temp. (C.) .

10
1-6

65
3-6

163
6-7.

108
11-7

123
16-7

149
201

82
260

78
26-1

202
22-6

135
160

142
10-4

80
3-9

The varied climate of Japan is indicated by the following
statistics for centres as far distant as Nagasaki in the extreme
south-west and Sapporo in Hokkaido :

Nagasaki

Kyoto

Tokyo

migata

Aomori

Sapporo

Daya of rain or

snow .

179

176

144

218

229

216

Average

temp. (C.) .

14-9

13-6

13-8

12-5

9-4

7-3

Maximum .

36- r

37-2

36-6

39-1

360

33-4

ATiniiTniim

5-6

11-9

8-1

9-7

19-0

25-6

The italicised temperatures are below zero. Average dates
of last frost : Tokyo, April 6 ; Nagoya, April 13 ; Matsumoto,
May 17.

POPULATION OF JAPAN, MANCHURIA AND
MONGOLIA [XXX]. The population of the Empire according
to the 1920 census was 77,005,510, which included Korea,
17,284,207; Formosa, 3,654,398; Saghalien, 105,765; and
South Manchuria (that is, the Kwantung Peninsula), 80,000.
In Old Japan (Honshu, Shikoku and KjTishu with the near
islands, and Loo-choos and Bonins) there were 53,602,043, and
in Hokkaido (including Kuriles) 2,359,097.
27

392

APPENDICES

Tokyo is the largest city, 2,173,000, followed by Osaka,
1,252,000. Kobe and Kyoto have a little more than half a
million ; Nagoya and Yokohama four hundred thousand apiece.
Ten other cities have a hundred thousand odd.

In the following table the populations and areas of Japan,
Great Britain and the United States are compared :

Country

Area

Population

Population
per aq. mile

Japan (excluding Korea, For-
mosa and Saghalien) .

British Isles . ,

United States (excluding
Alaska and oversea pos-
sessions) ....

142,000
121,633

3,000,000

55,961,140

(1920)
47,306,6641

(1921)

105,683,108
(1920)

394
388

Japan's 394 per square mile is lowered by the population of
Hokkaido (2,359,097), which is only 66 per square mile. The
population of the three chief Japanese islands is : Honshu, the
mainland (41,806,930), 471; Shikoku (3,066,890), 423; and
Kyushu (8,729,088), 511. (These figures are for 1920.) " As
regards density per square kilometre," writes an official of the
Imperial Bureau of Statistics in the Japan Year-hook, with
the figures antecedent to the 1920 census before him, " it is
calculated at 140 for Japan and this compares as follows with
Belgium (1910) 252, England and Wales (1911) 239, Holland
(1909) 171, Italy (1911) 121, Germany (1910) 120 and France
44. When comparison is made on the basis of habitable area
Japan may be considered to surpass all as to density, for while
in Japan it constitutes only 19 per cent, of the total area, the
ratio is as high as 74 for Belgium, 73 for England and Wales,
67 for Holland, 76 for Italy, 65 for Germany and 70 for France."
The Professor of Agricultural Science at Tokyo University says :
" The area under cultivation, even in the densely populated
parts, is comparatively smaller than in any other country."

In a statement issued in 1921 the Department of Agriculture
reckoned the population at 145 per square kilometre and
recorded the mean rate of increase " in recent years " as 12'06
per 1,000. It stated that the density of the rural population
was 44 per square kilometre or 9-42 per hectare of arable, in

Ireland taken at 1811 eensus figurei.

APPENDICES

393

other words that the density "is higher than that of France,
Belgium, Switzerland and some other countries where the
agriculture is marked by fairly intensive methods." Mr.
Nikaido, of the Bureau of Statistics, writes in the Japan Year-
hook that the annual increase of Japan's population was 14-78
per 1,000 for 1909-13 and 12-06 for 1914-18, " a rate greater
than in any civilised country, with the exception of Germany
and Rumania in the pre- War years."

The birth rate is high, but so is the mortality. The death
rate of minors is thrice that of Germany and Great Britain.
Here the increasing industrialisation of the country is no doubt
playing its part. The ratio of still births has steadily risen
since the eighties. The ratio of births, other than still births,
per 1,000 of population, which in 1889-93 was 28-6, increased by
1909-13 to 83-7 ; but the death rate fell only from 21-1 to 20-6.
The ratio of unmarried, 63-22 in 1893, was 66-22 in 1918.

The following figures for Japan Proper are printed by the
Financial and Economic Annual, issued by the Department of
Finance :

Tear.

Total.

Annual Increase of

Average Increase per 1,000

Population.

Inhabitants.

1910

50,716,600

1409 ■>

1911

51,435,400

718,800

1417

1912

52,167,000

731,600

14-22 - 14-21

1913

52,911,800

744,800

14-28

1914

53,668,600

756,800

14-30 J

1915

54,448,200

779,600

14-53 ->

1916

55,236,000

786,800

14-45

1917

66,036,100

800,100

14-49 - 14-50

1918

56,851,300

816,200

14-67

1919

67,673,938

822,638

14-47 }

1920

66,961,140

—

'~~

It will be seen that for the year 1920 there was a big drop.
The population of 55,961,140 for the year 1920 is the actual
population as returned by the census ; the figures of the
preceding years are " based," it is explained to me, " on the
local registrars' entries. The national census has demon-
strated that the figures were larger than the actual number of
inhabitants, the discrepancies being partly due to erroneous
and duplicate registration and partly to the exodus of persons
to the colonies or foreign countries whilst retaining their legal
domiciles at home. But the table serves to show the rate of
increase." A million and three-quarters is a substantial figure,

894

APPENDICES

however, to account for in this way. It would seem reasonable
to suppose that the increased cost of living, marriage at a later
age than formerly and increased mortality due directly or
indirectly to the factory system have arrested the rate of
increase of the population in recent years. For trustworthy
figures of the Japanese population we must await the next
census and compare its figures with those of the 1920 census,
the first to be taken scientifically.

A considerable part of Japan is uninhabitable. Of how much
of the British Isles can this be said ? The fact that there are in
Japan fifty more or less active volcanoes, about a thousand hot
springs and two dozen mountains between 12,000 and 8,000 ft.
high speaks for itself. Ben Nevis is only 4,400, Snowdon only
8,500 ft.

The population of Korea in 1920 (17,284,207) was 239 per
square mile. According to Whitaker for 1921 the population
of Manchuria (11 millions) is 80 per square mile, and of
Mongolia (8 millions) 2-8.

SMALL FARMS DECREASING [XXXI].

Tear

Below 5 tan

Over 5 tan

Over 1 cfta

Over 2 chs

Over 3 cho

Over 6 cho

1908
1912
1918
1919

37-28
37-14
35-64
35-36

32-61
33-25
33-30
33-18

19-51
19-61
20-70
20-68

6-44
5-96
6-33
6-21

3-01
2-83
2-82
2-83

1-15
1-21
1-31
1-74

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